It’s the first staging rehearsal for San Diego Opera’s production of George Frideric Handel’s Julius Caesar in Egypt. Present are company members in comfortable attire, director John Copley and a pianist. Music isn’t the thing today; movement is.

Openly gay countertenor Brian Asawa, a veteran of the role at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, plays Ptolemy, who co-rules ancient Egypt circa 48 B.C. with his sister Cleopatra.

He stands in the “wings,” the golden crook of Egypt in one hand. Tucked into the belt of his jeans is a long piece of red velveteen to simulate his costume’s train.

He makes his entrance, and in a subsequent lull introduces himself to Chicago-based countertenor Mark Crayton, who makes his San Diego Opera debut as Nirenus, Ptolemy’s henchman. Others in the company are Polish contralto Ewa Podles in the title role (yup, an adult woman in a toga), American soprano Lisa Saffer as Cleopatra and American mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux (another cross-gender role) as Ptolemy’s teenage nemesis, Sextus. Ptolemy tries to seduce and then tortures the lad’s mother, Cornelia (mezzo soprano Suzanna Guzman), who is the widow of a man he’s just executed.

“She rejects me,” Asawa said. “I had her husband’s head cut off. I’m really a baddie, and I get the best costumes, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert-ish. They have some very nice capes with trains. Our amazing director, who truly is a big mentor of mine, taught me the art of cape swishing. I’m doing some prancing and swishing in this opera, which will be fun.”

Countertenors sing in the soprano or mezzo-soprano range, not an octave lower as tenors do. Asawa discovered his true voice when he was a piano major at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1984. He hated piano, hated practicing, but loved singing tenor in the chamber singers and concert choir. Walking through a beautiful redwood forest on the way back to his dorm one night, he goofed off with the choral music, singing the soprano line. “I discovered I had a really strong falsetto voice,” he said.

Asawa took this discovery to his voice teacher, a Baroque tenor named Harlan Hokin, who said, “Yes, this is called countertenor.”

After two years of undergrad at UCSC and UCLA, Asawa entered the master’s program in early music at USC. He abandoned piano, got much more serious as a countertenor, and worked with Jim Taylor, a lutenist who headed the program. He performed “really cool arias and renaissance stuff” with Taylor’s orchestra, composed of period instrument players. Much to Taylor’s dismay, Asawa left the program to do the Metropolitan Opera auditions.

In 1991, Asawa was spring-boarded into his career when he became the first countertenor ever to win. “I don’t have the honor of saying I was the first countertenor to perform on the Met stage,” he said. “That was Jeffrey Gall, a really amazing singer [who] sort of sounded like the Marilyn Horne of countertenors. He was Ptolemy, in the original Met Julius Caesar.”

After his Met auditions triumph, Asawa became a young artist at the San Francisco Opera. In 1994, he won Placido Domingo’s Operalia competition. Then came roles in New York, Hamburg, Bordeaux, Paris, Naples and Barcelona, plus numerous recordings.

“Now it’s 2006,” he said, “and I feel my voice is just as fresh as it was in 1991. I actually know how to breathe, and my technique is so much more solid than it was when I first started. I was so green and so new to everything.”

He calls his voice teacher, Jane Randolph, the best on the West Coast. “She imparts a very natural way of singing,” he said.

Even though he’s moving to Berlin at the end of July, he will return at least once a year for tune-ups. “It’s so easy to get derailed,” he said. “Good singing is so elusive, and that’s why it’s nice to get re-railed. Even though I feel I’m really getting it in terms of solidifying my technique, there’s always more to learn.”

Asawa grew up in Los Angeles, where he was out to himself and his gay friends in high school. Gay men who grew up in small towns were not so fortunate, he said. They don’t have the freedom to come out at an early age. “Oftentimes they stay closeted, get married, have kids, and then lead tormented, hidden lives,” he said.

“I had crushes on boys and men from the age of 7 or 8. I think a lot of gay men as boys play with other boys without really knowing what’s going on. I had some of those experiences when I was very young, and then, when I became an adolescent I started to get more in touch with my sexuality.

“Every opera singer, whether gay or straight, has a terrible challenge of trying to have a secure and solid relationship with one person doing all the traveling we do. We’re essentially snails with our houses on our backs. Even if we have a home base with a partner and a family, it’s very difficult for both the person at home waiting and the person that’s traveling.” Asawa’s last long term relationship, from 1991 to 1997, ended for this very reason.

Asawa, 39, is an admitted master at keeping his dance card overfilled in order to avoid being alone. He is currently dating a Berliner, and is excited over the possibility of starting a love relationship. However, he plans to get his own apartment, where he will listen to and nurture his inner self and learn to love solitude.

“I’m at a point now where I’m appreciating everything so much more,” he said. “It’s time to grow up, to shed my old skin. That’s been difficult for me because I am a child. I am an adult boy. The journeys I’ve been through have been so winding.”

George Frideric Handel’s Julius Caesar in Egypt is performed at the Civic Theatre, located at 202 C St., at 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, April 15, and Tuesday, April 18. There are also shows at 8:00 p.m. on Friday, April 21, and at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, April 23. Single tickets range from $27 to $142. Visit www.sdopera.com or phone (619) 533-7000 for more information.