Well Met

Two AVA students make the top six at Metropolitan Opera auditions.


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Published: Apr 17, 2007

According to this year's Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, two of the top six young singers in the world are from Philadelphia. What's even more impressive, they're classmates at the Academy of Vocal Arts.

Angela Meade, 29, and Michael Fabiano, 22, are both second-year students at AVA.

This is the first year that two contestants from one school have won the prestigious Met auditions. Judges choose the six winners with no assignment of rank, but The New York Times reports that Fabiano inspired the most audience applause. National competitions narrow 1,500 singers down to 11 who competed onstage at the Metropolitan Opera with the Met orchestra on March 31. The winners took home $15,000 each.

Meade sang a Mozart aria and the difficult "Casta Diva" from Bellini's Norma. She was understandably nervous, performing a role very few sopranos have attempted in the Met's long history, and on the lavish Zeffirelli Traviata set in front of an audience of almost 4,000. "I remembered that Maria Callas sang it on this very stage and then I said to myself, 'Stop that,' and I just sang."

She calls the win "a dream come true," but opera was not always her dream. "When I graduated high school I thought I'd become a doctor. In college I sang in the choir, then became a music major at University of Southern California. I just sort of sang until I won the AVA audition and came to Philadelphia." Her first lead role in an AVA production was this January in Weber's Der Freischutz.

Meade is going to use her $15,000 to buy gowns and airline tickets — her family is on the West Coast — and put money into savings. "Best of all, I won't have to work another job to support myself." The AVA gives scholarships for tuition and board, but most students have to sing at churches on weekends or take nonmusical jobs to cover living expenses.

Fabiano was the youngest of all the contestants. He performed arias from Le Villi by Puccini and Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky, which he has sung in concert at AVA. His strongest impression so far in Philly was as the opportunistic Anatol in Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti's Vanessa in February. "Look for me in the B cast of Manon in May," he says modestly. Fabiano will alternate with graduating senior Stephen Costello as the tenor lead.

Unlike Meade, Fabiano was relaxed throughout the competition. "My expectations were low. I only expected to make it as far as the regionals." Fabiano, raised in New Jersey, was a Spanish and economics major at the University of Michigan until he was discovered by teacher George Shirley, a leading tenor at the Met in the 1960s. He'll use his prize to "start a Roth and buy a new computer."

Both Meade and Fabiano entered the competition to impress impresarios and music directors from around the world. A lot of opera companies make casting choices based on these auditions. (The Met used to give a one-year contract to winners, but no longer does so.)

Previous AVA winners were tenor James Valenti in 2002, tenor Jesús Garcia in 2001, soprano Latonia Moore in 2000 and soprano Indra Thomas in 1998. Curtis Institute students also have won the prize, one each in the years 2002, 2003 and 2004: Carolyn Betty, Alyson Cambridge and Meredith Arwady, respectively.

Thomas went on to sing Aida at the Met while Valenti starred in La Traviata at Salzburg (opposite the glamorous Anna Netrebko) and will repeat it in Toronto, Las Palmas and Berlin. Valenti also stars in Madama Butterfly at the New York City Opera next season. Garcia headlined in Baz Luhrmann's La Boheme on Broadway and will sing the lead tenor role in Falstaff for the Opera Company of Philadelphia next month. Arwady has the leading mezzo role of Mistress Quickly in the same Falstaff.

Valenti remembers how the Met auditions changed his life: "It really put me on the map and suddenly I had a lot of money and, for the first time, a lot of my family really got it, that I had a special talent and could make a good living."

(s_cohen@citypaper.net)