The 2017/18 season will be a very exciting one for Michael. On September 11th, he will open the Royal Opera as Rodolfo in the company’s new production of La bohème to be conducted by Anthony Pappano. This will be the ROH’s first new production of this opera in over 40 years. He returns to the company for the Duke in Rigoletto – the role that will serve as his debut at the Los Angeles Opera. Michael will also perform his first Des Grieux in Massenet’s Manon at the San Francisco Opera, appear in a recital for Oper Frankfurt, and return to the Metropolitan Opera for Rodolfo in La bohème and Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor, a role he will reprise for Opera Australia.

Both the La bohème and Rigolettoboth 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.

That was the verdict of some of opera’s keenest vocal judges a decade ago when they awarded Michael Fabiano, an explosively talented tenor who was 22 at the time and pushing himself hard, a career-making win at the 2007 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. A decade later, he is one of the most exciting, sought-after singers in the world — but the fatalistic warning was still ringing in my ears a few Sundays ago when Mr. Fabiano,