Who is Teiya?

Nikkei Canadian settler Teiya Kasahara 笠原 貞野 (they/them) is a queer and trans non-binary opera singer and theatre creator based in Tkarón:to (Toronto, Canada) and the creator-performer of the critically acclaimed show The Queen In Me.

Heralded as “a force of nature” (Toronto Star), a “commanding presence” (Theatre Reviewer),  and “an artist with extraordinary things to say” (The Globe and Mail) Teiya comes from a background of nearly 20 years of singing both traditional and contemporary operatic roles across North America and Europe. Recently featured in the CBC short-doc OPERA TRANS*FORMED, Teiya is a graduate of the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio and the University of British Columbia (B.Mus), and is the 2022 recipient of the Joseph S. Stauffer Prize in Music (Canada Council for the Arts). They have performed companies such as the Canadian Opera Company, Edmonton Opera, Vancouver Opera, Vancouver Symphony, Toronto Symphony, Windsor Symphony, Against the Grain Theatre, Aalto-Essen Musiktheater (Germany), Opéra Toulon, Tapestry Opera, the Luminato Festival, Theatre Gargantua, among others.

Some key operatic roles Teiya is known for include the Queen of the Night from The Magic Flute (Canadian Opera Company, Aalto-Essen, Vancouver, Edmonton, Kitchener, Haliburton), Fata Morgana from L’amour des trois oranges (Essen), and the title role of Madama Butterfly (Windsor Symphony; as the cover at the Canadian Opera Company). Other vocal highlights in Teiya’s career include performing alongside Polaris Prize and Juno award winner Jeremy Dutcher for his Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa album (2018 - present), debuting with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra in Beethoven’s 9th Symphony (2022), and performing the lead role in Dead Equal (a newly commissioned opera) at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. During the COVID-19 global pandemic (2020-2021), Teiya also created their first video series 19 VIDEOS FOR COVID-19 which garnered them the nickname, “the balcony soprano” (Toronto Star), video debuted the ongoing Butterfly Project (Confluence Concerts, Amplified Opera), and performed in various digital offerings including: S.O.S. Sketch Opera Singers (Tapestry Opera), Electric Messiah (Soundstreams), and Symphonic Pride (Vancouver Symphony Orchestra). 

Within their own artistic practice, Teiya explores the intersections of gender, sexuality, and race using elements of opera, theater, and electronics, as both creator and performer, noted in their first original work The Queen In Me which had its world premiere in June 2022 at the Canadian Opera Company (co-produced by the COC, Amplified Opera, Nightwood Theatre, Theatre Gargantua). The Queen In Me was a sold-out success and was nominated for five Dora Mavor Moore awards. The show just returned from touring the Belfast International Arts Festival where it was praised as “a radical, innovative piece of operatic art” and “a clever, caustically funny, pointed and pertinent solo show.” Teya’s “robust and undeniably stunning vocals” was especially noted for helping audience members bear witness to “the transcendent potential of the art form” (Intermission Magazine, British Theatre Guide). The Queen In Me will continue to tour across North America and internationally in 2023.

Teiya is also a co-founder of Amplified Opera (AO), a arts collective which seeks to bring Turtle Island/Canada an “injection of [...] creativity & politics of inclusivity” (barczablog) within the opera sector. Currently, AO has produced two sold-out concert series (AMPLIFY Beta in 2019 and AMPLIFY 1.0 in 2022) and since 2021 has been serving as the Canadian Opera Company’s first Disruptor-in-Residence, working closely with young opera artists who are developing new ways to decolonize their artistries. Teiya is also a founding member of the Queer AF Collective with Bilal Baig and Sofía Rodríguez, and has experience as a consultant, facilitator, and educator in both group and individual vocal and music coaching. Teiya has been on various panels delivered numerous speeches and workshops at organizations including the Association for Opera in Canada National Summit (2019, 2022), the University of Toronto Faculty of Music, (2021-2022), and as the keynote address for Queer History Month at McGill University (2022).

For the 2022/2023 season Teiya is a resident artist with re:Naissance Opera’s Indie Fest developing new works including Imaginarium, Inferno a new hip hop opera by Omari Newton and Amy Lee Lavoie, a live computer animated performance of Eurydice: Into the Underworld, and a concert with BIPOC Voices. They are also covering the title role in Salome (Canadian Opera Company), performing the Priestess & Bartender in a new opera called Pomegranate (Canadian Opera Company), and singing the soprano solo in Beethoven‘s 9th Symphony (Kingston Symphony Orchestra). Upcoming engagements include a Japanese opera Nae by Kokichi Kusano, new opera by composer Rita Ueda, and a video opera The Future’s Market by Douglas Rodger and Kong Kie Njo.

Other projects in development include 夜が一つの音になる (yoru ga hitotsu no oto ni naru), or When the Night Becomes One Sound (Nightwood Theatre’s Write From The Hip Program 20/21) and an interdisciplinary work called Little Mis(s)gender that was first conceived and then workshopped publicly when Teiya was the Artist-in-Residence for the Queer and Trans Research Lab at the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto (2021-2022). Finally, Teiya is also creating and composing a new work in collaboration with multi-instrumentalist and singer in both Japanese and punk rock art forms, Noriko Kim Kobayashi as a part of YUME: Digital Dreams (Tashme Productions), while creating a new opera with founding artistic director of re:Naissance Opera, Debi Wong entitled River Island, inspired by the life of Yoshiko Kawashima.

Teiya shares a home with their wife and two cats, Moira Rose and Stevie Budd. 

Last updated December 2022.