Michael Fabiano

World-Renowned Risk-Taking Opera Singer, Entrepreneur, Arts Philanthropist
Michael Fabiano in a black peacoat and grey scarf smiling at the camera
  • Award-winning opera singer, entrepreneur, and philanthropist dedicated to creating positive change through music and the arts
  • Relates performing on the big stage in opera to performing at the highest level in any endeavor
  • Draws from his experiences breaking barriers to share inspirational insights for taking risks, embracing controlled chaos, and composing your own path to success
  • Featured in The New York Times, The Independent, and other leading media outlets

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Having mesmerized audiences the world over with his unmistakable voice, Michael Fabiano has cemented his place as one of the most celebrated opera singers of his generation. Through the course of his career, Fabiano has sung in 76 cities, on 89 international stages, in 26 countries, and has had the privilege of performing on every major operatic stage in the world and collaborating with many of the most respected performers in his field. As a leading tenor, Fabiano has been praised for his intensity, emotional depth, and technical brilliance. He is a barrier-breaking talent whose career was chronicled in the Roku documentary Crescendo, and he draws from his own whirlwind journey performing at the world’s biggest venues to share powerful messages for how to be at your best when the spotlight is on you and compose your own path to success.

Fabiano seamlessly blends storytelling and song to empower groups to develop a can-do mindset, discover their purpose, take risks, and perform consistently at the highest level. Using lessons learned from his experiences on opera’s grandest stages, he inspires individuals and organizations to view their work as a live performance of their own creation and embrace controlled chaos as they set out to do the things people say they can’t and achieve seemingly impossible dreams.  

At the age of 22, Fabiano was among the youngest operatic performers to debut at the famed Teatro alla Scala in Milan. The rest, as they say, is history in his nearly 20-year career. Since then, he has captured the imaginations of audiences across the globe with his powerful voice and electrifying stage presence, on his rise to becoming one of the most sought-after tenors in the industry today. Fabiano’s career has seen him perform at the Royal Opera House and the Paris Opera, and countless venues in between. He has received critical acclaim for his portrayal of some of opera’s most iconic characters, including Faust, Rodolfo in La bohème, Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly, and Lensky in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin.

Fabiano has received numerous awards and honors throughout his career in recognition of his extraordinary talent and dedication. Among them, the prestigious Beverly Sills Artist and Richard Tucker awards, becoming the first singer to win both awards in the same year (2014). He is also the recipient of the Teatro Real Award and Australia’s Helpmann Award for “Best Male Performance in an Opera,” and has been honored by the Metropolitan Opera Guild and the Opera News Awards, among others.

A passionate advocate for the arts and combining the power of music and philanthropy to bring people together and inspire positive change in the world, Fabiano is the founder of ArtSmart, a nonprofit organization dedicated to transforming the lives of youth in under-resourced communities across the U.S. He is also a member of the Metropolitan Opera Guild Artists’ Council, as well as the chief strategy officer for social commerce platform Resonance, and a licensed private pilot.

Watching Fabiano perform has been compared to watching a superhero lift an object. He remains committed to his craft, as well as to making the world a better place through art.

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Speaker Video

Michael Fabiano: How to Prepare for Your Big Moment

Tory Burch Foundation EmbraceAmbition Speech

Michael Fabiano: What’s his recipe for being a great tenor?

Crescendo: The Michael Fabiano Story

Don’t Wait in Line: Creating Your Own Timeline for Success. Few people enjoy waiting in line and some of us will do anything to avoid it all together. So, why don’t we apply this same level of urgency to get ahead in our careers and reach collective and individual goals faster? Pulling from his own experiences taking risks and pushing past obstacles on the path to becoming a world-renowned operatic tenor, business founder, and startup advisor, Michael Fabiano opens audiences eyes (and ears) to the possibilities they can create for themselves when they stop waiting for life to happen and set out to achieve their purpose with intent.

In this talk, Fabiano discusses how over-simplifying life’s great lessons results in us waiting in artificial lines, as well as how waiting in those lines can be detrimental to success. Relating the worlds of opera and business to audience members and their organizations, he shares practical action steps for how anyone can navigate their path in work and life, and reach their goals faster.

The Storm Before the Calm: Preparing for Your Big Moment. As one of the world’s most sought-after operatic and live performers, Michael Fabiano has developed a unique approach for preparing to perform on the world’s biggest stages. Instead of training himself to remain calm, he repeatedly seeks out and engages in controlled chaos — something he credits as one of the keys to his success.

In this talk, Fabiano discusses what it means to instigate controlled chaos and the psychology behind it, while outlining a step-by-step methodology for how anyone can implement controlled chaos in the months, weeks, and days leading up to their big moment. Fabiano’s lessons from the worlds of opera and business leadership resonate with any audience and offer those in attendance new and creative ways to develop the can-do mindset that is so critical to sustaining high performance.

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