Toshiaki Murakami

He studied voice at the Kunitachi University of Music in Tokyo; his teacher was Motoharu Nakajima. He sang his first operatic roles already in 1995, 1996 and 1997 in Tokyo (Don José, Cavaradossi, Tamino and Pinkerton) – very likely in student performances since his official debut took place in 1998 in Yokohama, as Alfredo. He then joined the Fujiwara Opera Company in Tokyo.

In 2001, he went to Bologna for further studies, making his Italian debut the following year in Orvieto as Duca di Mantova. He also appeared in Bologna, Ferrara or Ventimiglia, as well as in Nagoya, Yokohama and Tokyo before returning to Japan for good in 2007, where he primarily sang with the Fujiwara Company, but also in Osaka, Nagoya, Chiba, Otsu and Kyoto. In 2010, he appeared at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto in a hugely successful production of Hans Werner Henze's Gogo no eiko, the Japanese-language second version of Das verratene Meer.

Reference and picture source: Murakami's website