BY CHRISTOPHER DELAURENTI [The Stranger, 23 February 2006]

Decades before the advent of American Idol, New York's Metropolitan Opera, perhaps America's most prestigious (and overrated) opera company, has held annual auditions to flush out promising singers. Although everyone bitches about "the Met," it remains an essential milestone for anyone wishing to follow in the footsteps of the great opera singers even non-opera lovers know: Domingo, Pavarotti, Callas, Nilsson, and so on.