Let's start with some free association. Topic? Opera singers. Go.

Diva. Egotistical. Self-centered. Larger-than-life. High maintenance. High strung. Rude.

We are currently producing an opera with 12 soloists. As our director said, that's at least eight or nine more than any opera needs....

During his recent viewing of Wagner's Parsifal at the "Met in HD" movie broadcast, fellow Huffington Post blogger Eliot Dailey found the artist interview intermission features jarring.

Not everyone would agree, as some folks undoubtedly welcome that kind of contrast in a five-hour afternoon of opera. But...

Watching the Academy Awards while following a Twitter stream of professional singers is to witness a curious and unique combination of empathy and turf war. So it will come as no surprise that my colleagues served up a crazy entertaining commentary on Sunday night's musical excerpt from Les Mis.

We...

"Why would anyone want her to fail?"

"For the excitement. The drama missing in their own lives. Look around. These people would love a good wipe-out. Now that would be real opera."

The above, from Richard Powers' The Time of Our Singing, is an exchange between young professional...

On this fall's nationwide talent search, over 70 singers told us about their career paths, aspirations and quirks. (Previous posts here, here and here.)

Today, the final entry -- audition season strategies, observations and advice.

The Topic: Audition...

Our month-long cross-country search for next season's singers has drawn to a close. There were plenty of nervous auditionees, ten thousand miles on planes and trains, a dodged hurricane, many memorable people and much great music.

Along the way, we gave our 500 auditioning singers the chance to fill out...

Today, a slightly lighter follow-up to last week's post. We're halfway through our 8-city audition tour, and both posts feature answers that the singers in our waiting rooms submitted via anonymous surveys. Enjoy.

Do you have any particular audition season strategies or unusual routines?

Making animal noises at...

I'm on the road, sitting all day every day in a series of large rooms, waiting for a different person to sing at me every ten minutes.

This is an odd enough way to make a living, to be sure. But it's the people on the other end of...

You arrive at the interview site with a large bag and duck into the bathroom to change into a memorable outfit -- the knee-length teal dress with the color-block heels or the new custom suit with eye-catching tie. After all, it's critical that the clothes are classic but current and...

Knowing where to place the goalposts is the first step.

I run a small opera company whose engine is a small group of prodigiously talented singers, hand-picked during an annual talent search. We choose these people every autumn, then we put together a performance season tailored to their profiles, and...

It's just 3 weeks until I sit in a chair and wait for a different person to sing to me every 10 minutes. All day. For the better part of a month. In 8 different states. And although my chair will be facing forward the whole time, I'm spending this...

For a month this fall, I will crisscross the country with two colleagues, spending weeks in windowless rooms, with a new singer coming in the door every 10 minutes.

No, I am not the newest member of the American Idol panel, but I will be in search of the best...

In October 1787, the premiere of Don Giovanni was postponed twice due to unprepared performers and tough rehearsal scheduling (according to Mozart.)

In July 2012, Wolf Trap Opera's opening of Don Giovanni was postponed twice due to a land hurricane. (It even has a meteorological name: derecho....

It's probably unnatural that I look forward to checking my email at about 11:00 p.m. each night. But during this Don Giovanni rehearsal period, that's when our stage manager's daily rehearsal notes pop into my inbox.

I started my opera life as a pianist, and the rehearsal room is the...

I seem to learn difficult things quickly and simple things slowly. It's taken me a long time to realize that one of the best strategies for coping with the busy summer season is to be sure that I get off the mental treadmill for at least an hour a day....

Your mission, should you decide to accept it:

Memorize a 2,000-word speech, some of it monologue and some of it dialogue.

Deliver most of it according to someone else's requirements of speed and inflection, some of which change on the fly.

Perform it while moving around a large area on...

This post about the ways in which Mozart's Don Giovanni was received at its premieres was sketched out and ready to go when Tuesday's news of the kerfuffle between the Metropolitan Opera and the trade mag Opera News broke out.

Music criticism has been...

Casanova: The name is synonymous with "womanizer."

Giacomo Casanova was a friend and colleague of Lorenzo da Ponte, the man who wrote the words to Mozart's Don Giovanni. Casanova and da Ponte had much in common, including a particular brand of masculine arrogance and the love of the pursuit of...

It started as a practical solution to a casting problem.

We had two perfect Don Giovannis and two ideal Leporellos. (Or would that be Leporelli?) And they were both embodied by the same two guys. So we did what any sane and fair-minded casting company would do: give both gentlemen...

It seems that when we look at Giovanni, what we see are our own cultural obsessions peering back at us.

The essence of the story is pretty simple: A powerful and charismatic man sleeps his way across Europe and thumbs his nose at man and God. But every different society...