Kazuko Hara

Who is Kazuko Hara?

Kazuko Hara is a prolific Japanese opera composer.

She studied at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music under Tomojiro Ikenouchi, graduating in 1957. She subsequently went to France where she studied with Henri Dutilleux and Alexander Tcherepnin. After that she then returned to Japan to teach at the Osaka University of Music.

Between 1978 and 1999 she wrote 18 operas, many of them performed in Tokyo by the Nihon Opera Kyokai or the Nikikai Opera. One work was performed in Italy. In general she has preferred Japanese subjects, however her second opera was about Sherlock Holmes and she composed an opera on Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment for a large-scale production at the New National Theatre, Tokyo in 1999.