(Chris Waddington, New Orleans Times-Picayune)  Dancing, nudity, acrobats, a masked Carnival ball and a gala dinner — does that sound like a travel poster for New Orleans? Make that a poster for the New Orleans Opera Association and you’d be right.

The group’s 2011-2012 season extends one of the city’s oldest, most deeply rooted artistic traditions, and keeps several hundred locals busy in the orchestra pit and chorus, in the prop shop, backstage — and even in some of the leading roles.