American singer Michael Fabiano is one of the world’s most sought-after and popular tenors. Opera Australia audiences will recall his starring role in Faust in 2015, his Ravenswood in Lucia di Lammermoor in 2018, and in 2019, his Werther.

He is the first artist to win the Beverly Sills Artist Award and Richard Tucker Award in the same year, and his Covent Garden debut as Lensky in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin was hailed as the most spellbinding in four decades.

Currently in Australia preparing for his first Melbourne recital and the premiere of Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur, Fabiano talks to Limelight about his meticulous approach to learning a part and of the solitude and sacrifices the job of opera singer demands of him.

Michael Fabiano. Photo © Jiyang Chen

“I’m a deep studier and I’ll work on scores for years before I’ll even unveil them. I’m not singing Il Trovatore for another year and a half, and I’ve already been studying it for two years,” says Fabiano, who courted controversy when he pulled out of several performances of Verdi’s opera a few years ago.

“I was going to sing Manrico earlier and...