I think it depends somewhat on whether you're in the chorus or a soloist.
CHorus music rehearsals, from what I've observed, always precede the
blocking rehearsals. For soloists, however, especially in major houses, I
think they can tend to be interspersed among the blocking rehearsals,
mainly because the soloists are often there for only a couple weeks
before the opening night of a new production (less time for a production
they have already performed/already in the house's repertory). At the Met,
this means that rehearsals often run for 12 hours a day; in Europe, they
tend to be less intense - there will be a 3-4 hour rehearsal in the
morning, several hours off in the afternoon, and another 3 hours or so in
the evening - at least that's they way the do it in Vienna and Zurich. I
believe this is because a lot more of the singers live full-time in the
cities where they perform, and the opera houses recognise (or have been
made to recognise) that the singers want some time off during the day to
take care of other aspects of their lives, like medical appointments,
picking kids up from school, shopping, etc.
As for music vs. blocking rehearsals, I think what happens is that a
soloist may do music rehearsals in the morning, then blocking in the
afternoon, or music on monday, wednesday, and saturday, and blocking the
remaining days - but I don't think there's necessarily a fixed rule about
how this works. I also believe that for leading roles, a lot of coaching
is done one-on-one between the soloist and the conductor, or the soloists
in various combinations with the conductor, while the others not in the
scenes the conductor is working on may work on blocking of the scenes that
they are in.
And then, of course, there are the final few rehearsals when soloists and
chorus come together for a complete staging rehearsal. Then add the
orchestra, and voila! Technical rehearsal and dress rehearsal.
Karen Mercedes
http://www.radix.net/~dalila/index.html
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What lies behind us, and what lies before us
are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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