Michael Fabiano
(c)Arielle Doneson
Tenor Michael Fabiano has been named the recipient of the ninth annual Beverly Sills Artist Award for young singers at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. The $50,000 award, the largest of its kind in the United States, is designated for extraordinarily gifted singers between the ages of 25 and 40 who have already appeared in featured solo roles at the Met. The award, given in honor of Beverly Sills, was established in 2006 by an endowment gift from former Met board member Agnes Varis, who died in 2011.
Fabiano, who at 29 is among the youngest singers to receive the award, is the ninth Sills Award honoree, following baritone Nathan Gunn in 2006, mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato in 2007, tenor Matthew Polenzani in 2008, bass John Relyea in 2009, soprano Susanna Phillips in 2010, mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard in 2011, soprano Angela Meade in 2012, and tenor Bryan Hymel in 2013.
Fabiano first came to prominence as a winner of the 2007 Met National Council Auditions, a competition that was documented in Susan Froemke’s film The Audition. He made his Met debut in 2010 as Raffaele in Verdi’s rarely performed Stiffelio. In 2012, he sang Cassio in Verdi’s Otello in a series of performances that included a worldwide Live in HD transmission to movie theaters in more than 60 countries. He currently stars as Alfred in a new production of Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus, which had its final performance of the season on February 22.
