Like many of you, we were pretty taken aback when we heard through a leaked email that Chautauqua Opera hired former young artists to judge their 2022 prescreen applications. We emailed Steve Osgood asking for a statement, and he ended up coming on the ol pod! We expressed our concerns and the concerns of the young artist community, and he answered. It was a pretty fulfilling convo and we’re excited to share it with you all!!!! It was nice to reach behind the curtain and find a dude there willing to chat. We treated it as a fact finding mission, without a ton of commentary. We make a couple of points and question whether or not this initiative is the way to go, but we mostly wanted to take a moment to start a dialogue, build a bridge, open our ears and understand the rationale behind this decision. We hope you find this as illuminating as we did.