Opera as bloodsport? Well, not exactly, but most ambitious young opera singers will spend much of their twenties vying for cash in singing competitions worldwide. The Metropolitan Opera Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition, one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious, held its Grand Finals Concert on Sunday, and each of its five deserving winners took home $20,000.

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Such contests have been around for centuries. Every opera lover will know Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, whose medieval denouement features two men competing for the right to marry the heroine. The complete title of another work by the same composer is Tannhaüser und der Sãngerkrieg auf Wartburg which means “…and the Singing Contest at Wartburg,” the crucial event when the title character disgraces himself by blaspheming. Even these days participants can still experience life-changing effects.

The Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions were first held in 1954, and its prize winners include a veritable ‘Who’s Who’ of top singers from Grace Bumbry, Jessye Norman and Frederica Von Stade to Renée Fleming and Ben Heppner to Lawrence Brownlee, Lisette Oropesa and Nadine Sierra. Mezzo-soprano (and past winner) Denyce Graves hosted the afternoon and informed the audience that over the past year, some 1,500 singers between the ages of twenty and thirty submitted videotaped samples. From that pool, 900 participated in the long and complex audition process carried out in thirty-seven districts from eleven regions across the United States, Puerto Rico, Canada and Mexico.

A week before the Grand Finals, nineteen semifinalists performed for the very first time on the Met stage. The contrasts between the semis and the finals were marked. For Monday’s first round, singers provided a list of four selections they were prepared to sing. All began with an aria of their own choosing, and then the team of six judges let them know which of the........

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