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John, this has been a great lesson in perspective. Not only do I plan to attend this years “casting call” in Chicago (November 6 – 7), but my friend as well. It will be a case of entering with eyes wide open. If either of us gets a call back (or in my case last year, invited into the room post “audition”), then we will count ourselves fortunate to spend another weekend having fun.

Thanks to your comments, as well as your followers here, we can enter this “casting” with better expectations.

Last year it was really interesting to watch and compare. A bit different if nothing else because of the size of Britain.

If you have a kid who has a talent and the kid tells you they want to audition, that’s a different story. I still think parents should make very clear with the child the reality of what they can expect on the show. If after explaining those things your kid still wants to go on the show, great. Just make sure the kids want to go and they know what they’re in for, and I’m cool with it.

I don’t think they deliberately hurt kids, but they often do it unnecessarily. Telling a 10 year old how she is so presumptious for singing same song as Bianca did (even though producers asked her to) but how she doesn’t have Bianca’s talent or charm is unnecessarily cruel, and it is done for our entertainment. Telling kids they are wonderful, inviting them to Vegas, then sending him back without even a second audition is also unnecessarily cruel. Why not just say “thank you very much, but you aren’t what we want” or “yes, you are great, which is why we are inviting you to Vegas, but we invite a lot of people and we may not be able to listen to all of them in Vegas”. Something like this.

I do agree with you about parents. If a child is talented, why not develop this talent at home and wait until the child is older. If not – surely the parents have to understand it. Let the child take lessons, see other kids with similar talent and judge realistically how your child compares.

I think Neal’s (or the producer’s) choice of “Nessun Dorma” was spot on. He won. Hard to argue with that;-) Remember it’s also a popularity contest more than a talent contest.

I hate when they say “bad song choice” since often it wasn’t their choice. Although, you could make the argument that they should know it’s a bad choice and fight to get a better choice. However, that’s little consolation since the real choice is probably sing something that’s a bad song choice or not be on the show at all. So, yes that comment is a mixed bag for me.

“they like hurting little children for the audience amusement. ”
That’s a little far. I don’t think they like hurting children. I think it’s fair to say that they “sometimes hurt children for the audience amusement.” I’ve often asked myself what the parents of some of these kids are thinking bringing them on the show.

Still I am not 100% convinced the song selection is governed entirely by copyright issue. Was for example “Nessun Dorma” really Neal’s choice – having training he should’ve known the aria is wrong for his voice and beyond his capabilities. He could’ve done much better with something like “Una furtiva lacrima” – also a beautiful aria but for a lyric voice, closer to the repertory he’d be singing in opera were he good enough for it. There are zillion of other famous arias to choose from – no less popular, no less of a “showcase”, but he choose this one. Not to mention that 99% of “opera singers” on these shows choose from repertory of about 3 arias, and invariably Puccini. Why? Also, in all cases only one of the selections performed on the show is an aria, and a couple of songs (Ave Maria and one crossover or two crossover songs). In fact, it seems most singers “choose” to repeat their first audition piece at finals – too much of a coincidence to be really a choice.

There are other things – all hearsay of course. A little girl auditioning the next year after Bianca won and with the same song and criticized severely for it. Her father later said that she was told to sing this same song by the producers. OK, this could be part of “casting” – they wanted to show “a Bianca wannabe” at the expense of traumatizing a 9 or 10 years old – they like hurting little children for the audience amusement. The girl was actually fairly talented based on her youtube videos, and she didn’t deserve to be setup like this.

There always are pitch problems from the majority of singers – is it because they are all tone deaf (unlikely) or because they don’t have time to learn it. Then the accusation of how the song choice was bad that happens way too many times.

Now, much of this could be explained by your “casting” comment; also by copyright. But I think sometimes “casting” goes too far. Most people I’d imagine would’ve liked to see things being a little less staged and a bit more spontaneous.