then, she was still hesitant, initially limiting herself to a part-time course in sight-reading. It was only at the urging of her instructor that she applied to become a full-time student singer. Hoping that she would at least learn how to play the piano well enough to handle pop tunes at parties, she auditioned with Mignons "Connais tu le pays?", and was accepted into the college's vocal programme. She was funded by help from her family and part-time secretarial work. (While working at the Long Wharf Theatre, she had once put her shorthand and typing skills to good use by spending a day temping as Ethel Merman's PA.) Despite a disappointing evening at a Metropolitan Opera Arabella"Awful, no melody"she chose to make opera her speciality, because it offered the quickest route to a degree. Under the tutelage of Sebastian Engelberg, she discovered talents in herself that she had not anticipated, yet she was still so unsure of herself that she contemplated a switch to nursing. But after Harold Schonberg wrote an appreciative review of her Lazuli in the college's production of Chabrier's L'étoile in The New York Times"This little girl has real personality and an interesting voice. She could go places"she found enough self-confidence to enter the Met's 1969 recruitment competition, encouraged by another dare from a friend who wagered $50 on her. Her singing of Charlotte's letter aria from Massenet's Werther got her through to the semi-finals, and the house's general manager, Rudolf Bing, was so impressed by her in a private audition that he signed her up as a comprimario for the next three seasons. Career Apprenticeship Von Stade made the first of her some 300 Met appearances on January 10, 1970 as one of the Three Boys in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, singing from a basket dangling vertiginously near the top of the proscenium arch: "We were so scared by the time we got down to the stage that we didn't even know what opera we were in". Her later novice roles were Bersi, Cherubino, Hänsel, Lola, Maddalena, Mercédès, Nicklausse, Preziosilla, Tosca'''s Shepherd, Siébel, Suzuki, Tebaldo, Virginella, a Flowermaiden in Parsifal, an Unborn Child in Die Frau ohne Schatten, Wowkle ("Part of my job was to zip Tebaldi up before her high B-flats"), Flora ("The dress was too long, and I kept tripping over it" and a Stéphano whose swordplay almost cost Franco Corelli a finger. Her neophyte