{"id":32729,"date":"2013-08-05T03:11:56","date_gmt":"2013-08-05T03:11:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=32729"},"modified":"2013-08-05T03:11:56","modified_gmt":"2013-08-05T03:11:56","slug":"japanese-canadian-hapa-woman-makes-opera-fun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=32729","title":{"rendered":"Japanese-Canadian hapa woman makes opera fun"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/globalasianwomen.com\/japanese-canadian-hapa-woman-makes-opera-fun\/\" target=\"_blank\">Japanese-Canadian hapa woman makes opera fun<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/globalasianwomen.com\" target=\"_blank\">Global Asian Women: Stories for and about Asian women around the world<\/a><br \/>\n2013-07-31<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/globalasianwomen.com\/about-2\/\" target=\"_blank\">Elizabeth Noh<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Her name means a solo piece in an opera, and it just so happens that Aria Umezawa is a trained opera singer.<\/p>\n<p>The mixed Japanese-Canadian is also the co-founder and artistic director of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.operafive.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Opera 5<\/a>, a small production company in Toronto, Canada.<\/p>\n<p>Fate or coincidence? Her parents had no idea when they named her 25 years ago.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy parents joke that if they knew I would follow my namesake, they would have named me lawyer or doctor,\u201d says Aria.<\/p>\n<p>Her calling came at the age of 6, when she saw her first opera, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Turandot\" target=\"_blank\">Turandot<\/a> by <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Giacomo_Puccini\" target=\"_blank\">Puccini<\/a>. \u201cThe music touched me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The experience lead her to study at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and later at McGill University in Montreal. She trained as an opera singer, but she found that she wasn\u2019t cut out to be a performer and was more suited to be a director&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;Aria is bi-racial. Her mother is Caucasian from the province of Alberta in western Canada. Her father is Japanese who came to Canada as a teenager. Aria was born and raised in Toronto. She has two younger brothers.<\/p>\n<p>Some people say Eurasian, but \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=329\" target=\"_blank\">hapa<\/a>\u201d is commonly used in North America. The term originates from Hawaii and means a person of mixed blood. We talk about her mixed background.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGrowing up, it never occurred to me that my family was different on any sort of substantial level. We ate foods that my friends didn\u2019t eat, and I was enrolled in karate instead of ballet, but I figured every family had its quirks,\u201d she says&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KMnC6wr9ipA?list=UUE5eib0yUxjT8sPNhrHJi7g\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/globalasianwomen.com\/japanese-canadian-hapa-woman-makes-opera-fun\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Japanese-Canadian hapa woman makes opera fun Global Asian Women: Stories for and about Asian women around the world 2013-07-31 Elizabeth Noh Her name means a solo piece in an opera, and it just so happens that Aria Umezawa is a trained opera singer. The mixed Japanese-Canadian is also the co-founder and artistic director of Opera [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,16,19,25],"tags":[15359,15357,15356,15355,1392,15360,15358],"class_list":["post-32729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-asia","category-canada","category-women","tag-aria-umezawa","tag-elizabeth-noh","tag-global-asian-women","tag-global-asian-women-stories-for-and-about-asian-women-around-the-world","tag-music","tag-opera","tag-opera-5"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32729\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}