Who is Gus Farwell?

Gus Farwell is an ex-college quarterback turned Opera singer.

In 1996, Gus Farwell was a backup quarterback for Arizona State’s famous Rose Bowl team. Farwell played behind College Hall-of-Famer Jake Plummer (his roommate), who would leave for the NFL following that season. Despite it being time to fight for the starting position, tragedy would strike for a second time in Farwell’s life, resulting in him walking away from football and Arizona State. No one could have known that over 20 years later, Farwell would bring joy to people around the world from the balcony of his home in Barcelona while the world battled a global pandemic.

Born in Los Gatos, California, Gus Farwell is from a sporting family. His father, the late Jim Farwell, was a rowing coach at Santa Clara and Stanford Universities, and his older brother, Joe Farwell, was a 4-year-starter linebacker at the University of Oregon. Despite being a talented athlete, Gus would also discover a love of the arts as a teenager which would lead him down a unique and interesting path. As a senior, Gus was named First Team All CCS Quarterback in 1994 (ranked above then honorable mention Tom Brady of Serra High school). But Farwell only started at Quarterback as a senior which lead to limited recruiting. So he chose to walk-on at Arizona State University because he felt a connection to the area from when he came to watch his brother play there years before, and they had an excellent theater department. Farwell was lucky to be part of the great 96 Rose Bowl team at ASU, and feels deeply connected to his Sun Devil Brotherhood to this day. Two weeks after the Rose Bowl, tragedy struck when Farwell’s best friend died in a car accident on the fifth year anniversary of his Father’s death of pancreatic cancer. Struggling to cope with the grief, Farwell walked away from football.

Having participated in some musical theater in High School, Farwell’s life changed forever late one night at a party when he was 18. Sitting around with some friends, the CD changer switched to the parents’ music. Farwell found himself suddenly lost in the music. It was unlike anything he had ever heard. It was Opera. He asked to borrow the CD, and began to sing along with it not knowing the words or the operas the arias were from. His singing was something of a party trick for years that his team mates would make him do at parties. It wasn’t until he met his wife many years later while visiting Barcelona, that he realized that it was something that he wanted to pursue professionally but the road for Farwell has been difficult. He came to singing very late, and despite studying with some of the best voice coaches in the world, and also at the world renowned Liceu Conservatory in Barcelona, finding a way into the opera world has proved very difficult. Farwell has sung at amazing events like Mohamed Ali’s Celebrity Fight Night where Tom Hanks threw flowers to Farwell in the midst of a standing ovation.

With a disappointing experience in a competition in Italy in the summer of 2019, Farwell had all but given up on singing as a profession. For eight months he did not sing. But on March 13th, the first night of Lockdown in Spain, he got caught up with emotion clapping with his community for the medical workers from his balcony and sang the last few notes of Nessun Dorma. Everyone cheered. The next day his wife encouraged him to sing a whole song, and thus began the tradition of Farwell singing every night after the applause for the medical workers. It was only supposed to last 14 days. Little did he know that it would end up being 65 days straight. On the fourth night, his 12 year old daughter took a video and it went viral. The daily performances were followed by viewers around the world and garnered worldwide media attention culminating with being featured on Good Morning America after his final performance.

He returned to ASU Gammage stage to sing beloved works from the opera, broadway and American songbook featuring the ASU Symphony Orchestra, Gospel Choir, Sun Devil Marching Band and faculty performers.

A concert collaboration with ASU Gammage in partnership with Sun Devil Athletics and ASU Salute to Service Week 2022, the program included songs from "Tosca," "Carmen," "La Bohème," "the Wizard of Oz," "Phantom of the Opera," "Les Misérables" and more!