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 *************************************** 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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