Opera Now: Live Wire
American tenor Michael Fabiano is a man of parts, reaching into the complex depths of opera’s great tenor roles on stage and investing in the future of the arts through his philanthropic work behind the scenes. We meet the singer as he looks forward to experiencing the visceral thrill of live performance once again.
Like many leading singers around the world, Michael Fabiano is finding himself busy again as opera houses look beyond the pandemic to restore their live programming in the season ahead. We chatted on Zoom recently, just as he was about to head to France to sing Cavaradossi in Paris Opera’s Tosca. Needless to say, he was elated at the prospect of being in front of a real audience after such a long absence during Covid.
Fabiano compares the thrill of singing live in a theatre with the excitement of being in a sporting arena. He was a professional baseball umpire for 12 years, alongside his opera career, travelling all over the US and the world. ‘I always make an equation between baseball and singing, in the sense that you have a stadium filled with thousands of spectators watching a great player go out to bat. And you’re waiting to see if that ball is going to be a home run or if someone’s going to catch it and it’s going to be out.
