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But it doesn’t just stop there. Chavez attributes at least some of her spark for the role to her Spanish ancestry. “She is fiery, as most Spanish women are, and I have that same blood in me,” from her father’s side. It’s important to convey that heat to an audience, she explained. “For me,” she said, “I have to personally engage in the drama of whatever song I’m singing. I have to make it personal to me and it’s not just about singing. If you chip away at the physical aspect of me being a performer,” she said, “I feel at a loss or in prison.”

At master classes she approaches her art the same way and with the same emphasis. “When I do master classes, I try to emphasize how important the physicality of what we do is. It’s one element in our training at the University and Conservatories that’s grossly lacking.” Even directors, she noted, sometimes forget to remind singers that they are actors as well, a situation that is “very, very tragic,” because “in this world of opera we don’t compete and survive if we don’t deliver the whole package.”

Lest one think Carmen is the only role she sings, Chavez, who began her professional career singing Hansel in “Hansel and Gretel” in 1997 with the Orlando Opera, also lists Octavian in “Der Rosenkavlier” and “Therese Raquin” in the opera of the same name as two of her favorites – and she made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Sondra Finchley, in Tobias Picker’s “An American Tragedy,” filing in for Susan Graham on December 16, 2005. The Met was impressed enough that they placed her on their roster in 2007, a placement she hopes will recur in the new season. And although she hasn't sung the part yet, she said that tackling the role of Charlotte in “Werther” is high on her list of coveted roles.

But even being on the Met roster is no guarantee that future work will follow because of it. Work has tapered off some in the United States and because of it Chavez recently returned from a trip to Europe where she engaged a manager to help establish a European identity. “We’re planning an audition tour in November,” she said, “before I head to Australia. Our plan is to get things going a lot more in Europe.”

“There’s an interesting phenomenon in that young American singers have a hard time breaking into some of our bigger houses,” she explained. “It seems that there’s a trend that young American singers have to go away to sort of prove themselves and then come back.” It’s not a gloomy outlook, but a realistic one, one that all singers have to face. “I wish I had a better hold on it, but right now I don’t have much here in the United States.” When the Met cancelled its production of “An American Tragedy,” for next season, it left her schedule blank – at least for the time being.

“The inner working of this business can be very slow,” she explained, “as certain major houses, or managers, or influential people, stand in the background and observe the progress of individual singers in whom they have an interest. It’s as if they want to be sure of the quality of the product before they invest – so it may take several years before a singer is rewarded with prize engagements.”

Perseverance, she said, along with family and good friends, is what keeps many a singer going through austere times. In the mean time, she noted, she will live by the simple rules she has set for herself: Be kind and cooperative, be prepared in your roles, work hard, find your center and hold to it, and most importantly, “be passionate and love what you do.”

And she does love what she does; it’s so obvious. She concluded with this thought: “As much as I treasure all of this, I treasure more the gifts of giving, loving, receiving . . . It’s far more important to me that when I die, I am remembered as one who loved deeply and generously, than being remembered as one with a lovely voice.”

And did I mention she’s single, “a huge animal lover,” and a pretty good Badminton and Racquetball player as well?

Be still men’s’ hearts. This Carmen may have been the best kept secret in the world of professional opera, until now.