Many opera stars are jet-setters. New York, Paris, Milan. Those arias can really boost one’s air miles. Few singers, however, fly their own plane. The 32-year-old American tenor Michael Fabiano is the exception. A couple of years ago he earned his private pilot’s license after taking his maiden voyage without an instructor. And the experience afforded him an artistic insight. “Flying solo,” he says, gave him a new appreciation for “how to be when I’m performing—free of everything in my head except for delivering great music.”

Fabiano’s career is certainly on an upward trajectory. Since winning both 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. This season he’s back at the Met as Alfredo in Verdi’s La Traviata; next season he stars in La Bohème and Lucia di Lammermoor, this time with more notice. Fabiano adores singing such defining tenor roles, not only because of their lyrical beauty but also because these Italian classics hark back to a time and place before opera became perceived as elitist. “When these operas were written,” he points out, “the people were the ones who came . . . . We’re talking grassroots, core, salt-of-the-earth people.”

Born in Montclair, New Jersey, Fabiano believes in the notion of opera as a populist art form—for everybody. He recently co-founded ArtSmart, an organization that provides free weekly voice lessons to high-school kids who lack access to the arts. (A pilot program in Newark will soon expand to Philadelphia and San Francisco.) Aviator, opera star, and educator, Fabiano has a bird’s-eye view of what needs to be done to keep the arts aloft in America. “If we don’t help children now, it’s not going to be organic for them to be participants in a classical-arts world in 10 or 15 years’ time.” Bravo!