Diego Opera; Tolomeo in Giulio Cesare at Metropolitan Opera, Bordeaux, Opera Australia, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Paris Opera, Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, and Hamburg State Opera; Arsamene in Serse at Los Angeles, Cologne, Seattle, and Geneva; the title role in Admeto at Sydney, Montpellier and Halle; Baba The Turk in The Rake's Progress at San Francisco and for Swedish television; Fyodor in Boris Godunov at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Endimione in La Calisto in Brussels, Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream at San Francisco, Houston, London Symphony Orchestra and Lyon; Ascanio in Ascanio in Alba at Lincoln Center; Farnace in Mitridate, re di Ponto at Opera National de Lyon and Paris Opera; Nero in L'incoronazione di Poppea in Sydney; Orfeo in Orfeo ed Euridice, La Speranza in L'Orfeo and L'Umana Fragilita/Anfinomo in Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria at Netherlands Opera; David in Handel's Saul and Belize in the opera Angels in America by Péter Eötvös at the Bavarian State Opera, and Sesto in Giulio Cesare at COC in Toronto. Asawa not only performed in opera, but was interested in expanding the art song literature for countertenor, supporting living composers by commissioning, performing, and recording works by them. Perhaps best known is the song cycle "Encountertenor", commissioned from Jake Heggie and premiered at London's Wigmore Hall in 1995 (later recording it for the RCA Red Seal label). Asawa also recorded a disc of songs by Ned Rorem with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra for RCA. More recently, Asawa sang San Francisco composer Kurt Erickson's "Four Arab Love Songs" (a mini-cycle of medieval Arab poems from Spain’s Andalusia region dating from 900 to 1100 AD) on a premiere tour consisting of concerts in Long Beach, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, California and in Washington State. At the time of his death, Asawa was slated to premiere the song cycle "O Mistress Mine" (12 songs on texts from the plays of Shakespeare) written for him by Connecticut composer Juliana Hall at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival in celebration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death. In May 2014, Asawa performed a recital program with mezzo-soprano Diana Tash at the Festival de Mayo in Guadalajara, Mexico. In 2014, Asawa and Peter Somogyi established Asawa and Associates, an operatic artists' management agency. Personal life and death Asawa was openly gay and believed this had helped him discover his voice type. "Heterosexual