Michael Fabiano first impressed Australian audiences when he sang the title role in David McVicar’s new production of Gounod’s Faust for Opera Australia in 2015. (It won him a Helpmann Award.) Before his arrival, much was known about Fabiano, who had won the Richard Tucker and Beverley Sills Awards in the same year (still the only artist to do so). ABR Arts was there on opening night, and I wrote:

Much had been written about our new Faust … Little wonder: this is a rousing tenor voice. Fabiano’s diction is impeccable; and he is an instinctive actor, always alert, human, responsive. The high notes have clarion power. At first the voice reminded me of Franco Corelli; then Fabiano gave us an exquisite ‘Salut! Demeure chaste et pure’ sung in the authentic French style, elegant and light, with a floated top C that characterises the true Gallic style (not a feature of the uninhibited

I next heard him as Poliuto at Glyndebourne later that year, then as Edgardo in New York in 2018. This was in Mary Zimmerman’s celebrated production of Lucia di Lammermoor for the Metropolitan Opera. Fabiano, opposite the luminous Pretty Yende, was in ringing form:

With his passionate, Method-like acting and flamboyant high notes, he almost stole the show during the wedding scene and the long scene in the cemetery which closes the opera, to some Lucias’ chagrin.

Michael Fabiano in Lucia di Lammermoor (photograph by Jonathan Tichler Metropolitan Opera)

Along the way, Fabiano has been exceptionally busy: as Rodolfo, Pinkerton, Calaf, Gennaro, and Hoffmann.

This recital – with Laurent Philippe at the piano – marked Fabiano’s Melbourne début. Let us hope it will not be his sole appearance here, should the new regime at Opera Australia offer Melbourne some consolidated repertoire after this year’s jejune offerings.

The program featured Italian, French and Russian songs and arias: three canzone by Puccini, then an aria from Tosca; three chansons of Duparc (rarely heard); four Neapolitan songs of Tosti; then five meaty arias in the second half, followed by obliging encores from Un ballo in Maschera and the inevitable ‘Nessun dorma’.

Fabiano began, rousingly, with ‘Inno a Diana’. This was some welcome to the hall. To paraphrase Puccini, the fervent love song reached us like a joyous echo. From the outset, the tenor demonstrated all the colours and capacity of his unusually expansive voice, from shaded passages to surges of volume that rang through the hall. ‘E lucevan le stelle’, from Tosca, was beautifully done, with colourings that few tenors would risk.

Inevitably, the Tosti songs lacked the subtlety or searchingness of the Duparc bracket, but Fabiano was expressive and there was a fine trill in ‘Ideale’.

Fabiano – a natural actor – is nothing if not impassioned. Of the second-half offerings, the finest was the long and moving aria that Tchaikovsky gives Lensky in Eugene Onegin, a role that introduced Fabiano to the Royal Opera House. It was good to hear rarities from Verdi’s Il Corsaro and Massenet’s Hérodiade. (Only Massenet would have the Baptist falling in love with Salome.) The aria from the latter exposed Fabiano’s impressively secure lower register.

Throughout, the singing was ardent, generous, unfaltering, even explosive at times. It was a memorable evening from the American tenor, one that augurs well for his imminent appearances in Cilea’s 1902 verismo opera Adriana Lecouvreur, which Michael Halliwell will review for ABR Arts when the new production opens in Sydney on February 20. This is the first time Fabiano has sung Maurizio. Temperamentally and vocally, the role should suit him well.

Michael Fabiano in Concert (Opera Australia) was presented at the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall at the Melbourne Recital Centre on 12 February 2023.