LANDSCAPE OF THE FUTURE.(Brief Article)

The last weekend in March, the Met hosted two events that should gladden the hearts of everyone who cares about the future of opera. The first was the final round of Texaco's Quiz Kids, which featured three students -- from Seattle, Houston and New York City -- who appeared during the single intermission of Prokofiev's The Gambler on the broadcast of March 31. The panelists were chosen after three rounds of competition in six regions across North America and were questioned by pianist and vocal coach Steven Blier.

An unusual aspect of this Texaco Quiz was that, far from trying to stump the panelists, Blier sought to get them to demonstrate that they had thought about the operas they had studied in the course of preparing for the competition. There were none of the sweat-inducing vocal identifications, and on the few that demanded a series of answers that were unquestionably right or wrong, the three had to be prompted gently by moderator Blier. But it mattered not at all. What was so impressive about finalists Jessica Agudelo, Mara Caden and Rachel Hanley was that they were ordinary American teenagers who, when shown the multi-faceted art form that is opera, had cottoned to it and allowed an attraction to develop into an enthusiasm, then progress to a passion. And they could talk about their passion knowledgeably, in straightforward terms. There was nothing of the hothouse or the prodigious about these young people (unless it is prodigious in today's America for a teenager not to begin every sentence with "like," a word these young women used only rarely). Texaco and the Metropolitan Opera Guild, which manages the program, plan to expand the Quiz Kids competition to twelve cities next year.

On Sunday of the same weekend, the Met held its National Council Grand Finals Concert, presenting ten singers chosen from among the two thousand or so who entered the contest from fifty-three districts. Beginning on page 14, features editor Brian Kellow provides a look at part of the ...