The women emerge from the factory in Seville, fanning themselves, lighting cigarettes, and flirting with the soldiers in the street. One of them, a young woman with dark hair pulled back from her pale face, rushes to take a swaddled infant from a nursemaid. As she tenderly cradles the baby in her arms, the gypsy Carmen appears a few feet in front of her. Ominously, seductively, the opening four-note tango rhythm of Georges Bizet's famous habanera begins; then the voice of international star Elina Garanca fills the Metropolitan Opera House: "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle que nul ne peut apprivoiser."

The chorus soon joins in, and it includes the young brunette. She is Peabody graduate and soprano Sara Stewart (GPD ’02, Voice), who this fall began her debut season in the Metropolitan Opera Chorus—one of only two women to join the 80-member chorus this year. On stage with her that night is alto Catherine Mieun Choi (GPD ’00, Voice), another Peabody graduate, who joined the chorus in 2009. And just off stage, fellow graduate Richard Crawley (GPD ’96, Opera) has warmed up and is ready to go on at any moment. Required to be within 15 minutes of the stage, he is also in his first job at the Met, covering for the tenor lead role of Don José. Last year, after Crawley performed twice at New York's Avery Fisher Hall—including one occasion when the featured soloist pulled out and Crawley had just six days to learn the title role of Fervaal, a four-and-a-half-hour opera that he had never even heard of—the Metropolitan Opera invited him for his first stage audition.

Left to right: Peabody alumni Kevin Courtemanche, tenor; Vladimir Shvets, baritone; Maggie Finnegan, soprano; Sara Stewart, soprano; Catherine Choi, mezzo-soprano; and Melissa Collom, mezzo-soprano (four year private student of Stanley Cornett) in front of Lincoln Center.

In all, eight Peabody graduates are with the Metropolitan Opera this fall , including Lee Hamilton (BM ’74, Voice) and Melissa Lentz (BM ’79, Voice). The other six are all former students of vocal teacher Stanley Cornett. In addition to Stewart, Crawley, and Choi, Cornett's recent past students include Kevin Courtemanche (BM ’99, Voice), Vladimir Shvets (GPD ’97, Opera), and Maggie Finnegan (MM ’10, Voice). Members of the Met's extras chorus, they perform in this season's new production of Boris Godunov, a four-hour-plus extravaganza that brings these alumni together on one of the great opera stages in the world.

Boris Godunov, in fact, marked Stewart's first appearance. "It's a huge Russian epic work, and it was very intimidating," says Stewart, at a restaurant near Lincoln Center in between an afternoon rehearsal of Carmen and an evening performance of Don Pasquale. "But they had a rehearsal in the spring, which Maestro [Donald] Palumbo invited me to come to. We spent the whole time on only 12 measures, and everyone seemed just as new to it as I was."

If Stewart took comfort in a common learning curve for the new production, she was stunned to find the opposite true for La Bohème. In what she now knows is a rite of passage for every new member, she had to learn her way during her first live performance of this decades-old production, for the Met no longer conducts dress rehearsals. Before she headed onto the stage during the run-through, a staff director gave her just one line of instruction, which she recalls precisely: "Ms. Stewart, you are on the upper platform. When you have time, shop."

"I was almost in a state of shock. On top of that, I was standing on the Zeffirelli set, and the gravity of it, just thinking about the history of this structure and who has sung there through the years, overcame me," she says. "While Musetta sings her aria, I stood there listening; I looked around, took it all in, and the emotions—and some tears—came."

In all, Stewart appears in 16 productions this season, only five of which she has previously performed. As a lead and a chorister elsewhere, she had the luxury of concentrating on one opera at a time; not so at the Met. Stewart is a quick learner, but for the first time in her life, she says, "I'm making note cards."

The schedule is rigorous. The season runs from August through May. Each weekday, the chorus rehearses from 10:30 or 11:00 am until 3:00 or 4:00 pm. Six evenings a week—and twice on Saturdays—performances take place. Stewart does four to seven a week, typically consisting of four different productions. "I'm told you don't really become comfortable until the fifth year," she says.

Still, the job is widely considered the best in opera: a union position with high salary, benefits, and a pension that lets you work with the greatest operatic performers, conductors, and musicians in the world. Cornett says it can be either a steppingstone, or the pinnacle of a career, but in both cases it's a wonderful way to make a living. "There's the constancy of the income, as well as being in that elite area of opera that's unusual for most people to be in," he says. "You can have kids and have a normal life. But the opera singer who's doing a solo career? If you're successful, you're in hotels 10 months of the year."

The Metropolitan hears between 400 and 600 auditions a year. The first round occurs in the fall, with some people called back for a second round in the spring. Stewart auditioned only once, last spring, and received the call from Maestro Palumbo just days later.

"It felt like winning the lottery," she says.

And it came after years of ups and downs, of juggling a combination of church choir jobs, part-time vocal positions in Washington and Baltimore, some lead roles in regional operas, coming close in many competitions—as she held down a parttime office job to help her pay the bills. She attributes her success to her teacher. "I give all the credit to Stanley, for everything I have done with my voice since I came to Peabody," Stewart says. "Obviously, I had a voice going in, but it was not fully supported, not fully developed. He built my voice from the bottom up."

Cornett, meanwhile, credits Stewart's hard work and perseverance. Her voice, he says, is a full-throated lyric soprano—"and it wasn't when she came to Peabody." As she has made her voice freer and more relaxed, it has moved into new territory. "Sara really kept working on her craft, coming back, trying to take it to a new level. And lo and behold, she started to get things, and people took her seriously in this new fuller lyric category," Cornett says. The Met Opera job is "a wonderful manifestation of all that hard work."

Cornett is only one member of a vocal department that Crawley notes is remarkable for the collegial way it functions as a team. Department Chair Phyllis Bryn-Julson says that she and her faculty colleagues are proud of the department's many alums "who are finding there is life after Peabody."

"I am constantly amazed at how resourceful our alums are," she says. "Some have gone on to create small opera companies on their own, some have joined professional opera choruses (yes, paid ones!), while others have gone on to apprenticeship programs. We also have some who have experienced great success in the art song/recital venue, as well as chamber music. We always felt our students were talented, for sure, but to find that the real world believes in them, too, is a heavenly bonus for us," says Bryn-Julson.

Cornett describes his pedagogical approach with an impressive list of sports analogies. He also admits that sometimes teaching is a bit like watch repair: To fix one small thing that isn't working, you have to disassemble the entire piece. That can make people feel vulnerable.

Current second-year Peabody student Kristina Lewis knows this well. A year ago, she left her first few lessons with Cornett quite overwhelmed. "I was like, 'He's changing so much. What's happening?'" says Lewis, a 23-year-old contralto who debuted as a soloist with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra this fall. Soon, however, her voice was growing. "He figures out what's going on with the voice even when I don't fully understand," she says. "He works miracles." This fall, the Met invited Lewis to audition for its chorus as well.

Cornett finds these new hires a very good sign for the Metropolitan Opera. "It's refreshing because the voices are young and healthy and clearer and will make [the chorus] sound a lot better," he says. And while Stewart and Lewis both found their audition process surprisingly gracious with current chorus members, staff, and management kind and welcoming, they also noted how nice it was to know other Peabody alumni there too.

When the five recent alumni first came together for the rehearsals of Boris Godunov, they swapped stories about Peabody and studying with Cornett. They laughed about how they use the same images, those vocal visualizations that are unique from teacher to teacher. Crawley, who has run into former classmates Courtemanche and Shvets backstage at the Met, shares their memories, too. "Stanley has an extraordinary knowledge of vocal technique and the physiology that goes behind it, the muscles, the mechanism of singing," he says. "He also does use imagery, which I find very helpful, because we're artists, and imagery gives you an artistic vision to think about."

Whatever visualizations the vocalists may use, for Met audiences one image rings clear: whether factory girl in Seville, bohemian in the Latin Quarter, or lady-in-waiting for the queen of Spain, Stewart displays her artistry, night after night, as she performs the music, and does the work she loves, full time.