Sound Bites spotlights up-and-coming singers and conductors in the world of opera.
Sound Bites: Michael Fabiano
Photographed in New York by Dario Acosta
Grooming by Affan Malik
© Dario Acosta 2010
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© Dario Acosta 2010
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Michael Fabiano has talent, drive, even business acumen in his genes: both parents were voice majors, and his father, now a corporate CEO, has been a powerful influence. "He's a brilliant strategic planner," says Fabiano. "When I was sixteen, he had me sit down with a CEO of a larger company and talk about a plan for the next ten years — how I would advance as a corporate person. Now I apply that instinct to my career, except being an opera singer is not being part of a corporation. There's a total emotional impact that in corporate life is almost not there. So that's the issue I have to reconcile — the cohesion of emotion and art with strategic planning and forward thinking."
The tenor's victory in the 2007 Met National Council Auditions, at the tender age of twenty-two, was preserved in the documentary The Audition, where his frankly competitive persona gave the film most of its bite. "That's what people argued I did too much of — that I spoke my mind," he acknowledges now. "I tend to tell it as it is. I think that's the more genuine way, rather than coat things with nonsense."
That frankness translates appealingly to his singing — a passionate, open-throated sound, deployed with distinctly Italianate slancio. With debuts at English National Opera, La Scala and the Met (as Raffaele in last season's Stiffelio) now under his belt, his greatest challenge, he says, is "convincing people that I'm something to believe in — that I'm in it for the long run. I'm not just going to be here for three seconds to make a fast buck. Being a young person that's highly driven, like I am, scares a lot of people. And I don't want people to be scared."
For now, Fabiano is focused on a small number of operas he wants to "keep combing with a fine-tooth comb — Rigoletto, Lucia, Traviata, Bohème and Elixir of Love." He's looking forward to Lucrezia Borgia at ENO (Jan.), Edgardo in Bilbao (May) and his Paris Opera debut as Cassio in Otello (June).
Fabiano cites maestro Christofer Macatsoris, whom he met while attending Philadelphia's Academy of Vocal Arts, as the colleague who has "given me more than anyone else. No other coach or conductor I've worked with has literally every note stopped me and said, 'That's not right, do it again.' Initially, it's very jarring to work with someone who's so picky, but after a while you get the way they work and the reason why they challenge you — so you can get better and better. I worked with him yesterday for an hour, and I was giggling, because I hadn't been fine-tuned and picked over like that in a long time, and I love it!" 
LOUISE T. GUINTHER
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