Yuri Kasahara
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Yuri Kasahara (笠原 ゆり Kasahara Yuri) is a Japanese opera singer.
Kasahara is a graduate of Tokyo's "Star Woman High School of Urawa", with self-education in the Toho Gakuen School of Music, majoring in singing, minoring in piano. During university attendance, she debuted in A Midsummer Night's Dream in the Samita Hall. Simultaneously, she recorded several television commercial tunes. (To this date, she has sung over 100 songs for commercials.)
In 1989, she was the part of the Queen of the Night in a production of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte at the Shinjuku Cultural Center. Following, she was in Cemellia Princess and Hendel and Grey. In addition, she has performed a multitude of operettas for many concerts.
In 1990, Kasahara crossed over from Japan to Italy for further operatic studies. She passed many auditions for operas, performed in music festivals, and was regarded as one of Japan's finest vocalists[citation needed]. Several years passed by, and she returned home, with further confidence for the Japanese stage.
In 1994, she went with the Japanese Performance Association to a French music competition and won first prize. During the same year, she performed in the Toho Gakuen School of Music's 30th anniversary ceremony as one of the top students. In addition, Kasahara also went and performed in the Coca-Cola Special Musical Opera (also known as The Magic of Coke, with a nationwide performance).
She most recently has been writing lyrics for operas, obtaining high appraisal for her work in the entire musical score for Love Believing. She has also worked on the music and script for Douro no Aka SHOES and the operatic adaptation of the Yokohama fairytale Aoi Hitomi. All of her works have been performed in multiple opera circuits in Asia. Also, she has been noted for working with Yuki Kajiura on the anime series Noir, Aquarian Age: Sign for Evolution, and the OVA .hack//Liminality, in which she sung four versions of the song "liminality". A few of Kasahara's lines from "liminality" also make a cameo with Emily Bindiger on a remix of the .hack//SIGN song "The World", and she has been spotted frequently as a guest vocalist with See-Saw. She also makes an appearance on Kajiura's solo album Fiction, singing a redone version of "Salva Nos" (from Noir) and a new song "Red Rose". In 2006, Kasahara sung for the soundtracks of My-HiME(such as Ensei, Mezame, etc.) and My-Otome (such as Otome no Komoriuta, Ikusa Otome, - Aoi to Kuro no Kyousoukyoku, Mai-OtoHiME Saga - Memorial Melody, etc.)
Yuri Kasahara has recorded her own two-disc album entitled "An Encounter" featuring several of her most famous non-anime related performances, rerecorded with the Tokyo Konsei, and is currently being featured as a vocalist for the Madlax soundtrack.
