A couple of comments: I think it is admirable and welcome that the company’s Music Director is involving himself in the young artist program. The Lindemann project and its predecessor, the Metropolitan Opera Studio, has been around for a long time, and considering that stretch of years and the level of young talent the company automatically commands, when it comes to important voices and major personalities, the output has been quite meagre. N-S’s words on fitting a mold and shutting down individual personality will ring true with many who teach and coach. As with his earlier stated ambition to give the Met orchestra a more sonorous underpinning, I feel entirely supportive of his intentions. The obvious caveat, though, in light of what we’ve so far seen, is this: A singer’s personality is conveyed first of all by his or her voice.  How the voice is set in the body determines a lot of what can emerge from the spirit and the imagination, and singers sense what is and isn’t possible. Some stay carefully within that sense, and others try to transcend it, but in either case the structural parameters of the instrument, as trained, will finally rule. In the cases of young singers who have already come as far as a major company’s young artist cadre, it’s very late to be making structural changes—one can only nudge and encourage. That’s where some of the technical beliefs articulated by Nézet-Séguin give pause. But it’s early, so we’ll endorse the words while awaiting the results.

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NEXT TIME: Well, Bohème is still nagging. But as our leader so often says, “We’ll see what happens.”

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