Michael Fabiano, the Metropolitan Opera’s High Flying Leading Man
This season, the tenor (and private pilot) takes the stage as Alfredo in La Traviata.
This season, the tenor (and private pilot) takes the stage as Alfredo in La Traviata.
Many opera stars are jet-setters. New York, Paris, Milan. Those arias can really boost one’s air miles. Few singers, however, fly their own plane. The 32-year-old American tenor Michael Fabiano is the exception. A couple of years ago he earned his private pilot’s license after taking his maiden voyage without an instructor. And the experience afforded him an artistic insight. “Flying solo,” he says, gave him a new appreciation for “how to be when I’m performing—free of everything in my head except for delivering great music.”
Fabiano’s career is certainly on an upward trajectory. Since winning both the Beverly Sills Artist Award and the Richard Tucker Award, in 2014, he has been busier than ever. In 2015, Fabiano made international headlines when he replaced an ailing tenor to perform Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor at the Metropolitan Opera—with only seven hours’ notice from the call to the curtain.
If we don’t help children now, it’s not going to be organic for them to be participants in a classical-arts world in 10 or 15 years’ time.
Michael Fabiano
