I'm afraid I have to disagree, generally, with Trevor - not because I
don't agree that, in theory, he should be correct. But my own experience
has been - after auditioning for literally dozens of musical productions -
that at least 90% of the time the auditors do NOT want to hear a song from
the musical at your first audition.
I think there is a legitimate reason for this. I was incorrect when I used
to simply attribute it to the fact that the auditors for MAN OF LA MANCHA
didn't want to hear 47 renditions of "The Impossible Dream" in an evening:
by that illogic, opera auditors wouldn't want to hear 47 renditions of
"Vissi d'arte" at a TOSCA audition, and we know well that this is exactly
what they *do* want to hear. It has much more to do with the difference
between opera and musical theatre as GENRES.
Opera is a musical genre with a strong dramatic element. It is music,
acted and staged.
Musical theatre is a theatrical genre with a strong musical element. It is
theatre in which certain ideas are expressed in song rather than spoken
dialogue.
Both genres have a lot of commonalities: staging, costumes, acting, and
the setting of text to music are just a few of the most obvious. But
there is an essential difference as well: performers in musical theatre
virtually always consider themselves ACTORS WHO SING, while performers in
opera virtually always consider themselves SINGERS WHO ACT. And in that
difference lies a subtle but extremely significant key to why opera
auditors want to compare 47 different singers' renditions of "Vissi
d'arte" - that is, they want to hear that the singer has an established
sense of the vocal, musical, and interpretive aspects of the aria, as an
example of how they will approach the role of Tosca (or, if they're
auditioning for the chorus of TOSCA, of how they will handle Puccini's
music period). Operetta, as I mentioned in my response to the original
query about G&S auditions, is like opera in this regard: and G&S in
particular is performed within the constraints of some very strong
traditional conventions so that the Mabels, Katishas, Mikados, Bunthornes,
Joseph Porters, etc. of past productions are very likely to find they can
transfer the whole cloth of their past interpretations of this role to new
G&S productions with little or no modification, just as most of the
Lucias, Carmens, Otellos, and Scarpias out there don't change their role
interpretations very much from production to production (in some cases for
the very simple reason that operas these days are pathetically
underrehearsed).
Musical theatre directors, on the other hand, like all theatre directors
most often do NOT want actors to come to them with well-developed
preconceived ideas of how they would perform the roles for which they are
auditioning. Indeed, an actor who comes to them having such a "finished"
notion of the role sets off all sorts of warning flags, because it's
likely the performer has either played the part before, or has spent a lot
of time contemplating in detail how he would play the part. In both cases,
the director is justified in worrying that the actor is coming to the
audition with his preconceived ideas already too well established for him
to be able to easily abandon them and embrace the director's possibly
vastly different concept.
Of course, there's always the chance that, roulette-wheel-like, the actor
will just happen to spin to and hit an interpretation of the song that
matches (or comes very close to matching) the director's concept. But what
if he doesn't? Of course, there are a few directors who might be suddenly
struck like Saul on the road to Damascus with the stunning revelation of
the "rightness" of the actor's interpretation and the "wrongness" of the
director's own. Or, less dramatically, the actor's interpretation might
get the director thinking about how he might change his own ideas. Or it
might not. The question, then, is this: is an actor who hopes to get a
role willing to risk it? Is he willing to risk coming in with an
interpretation of a role (as manifested in his interpretation of the song
sung by that character) that is not just different from the director's
idea, not just widely at variance with the director's idea, but
potentially OFFENSIVE to the director because it is SO widely at variance.
Why, when there are so many other wonderful songs out there, many of which
are "very much like" the songs sung by the characters we'd like to play,
would we make the _faux pas_ of actually singing the song for that
character from the show we're auditioning for.
Quite a few musical theatre audition notices make it easy for us: they
state explicitly that one should not sing a song from the show. Any actor
who ignored this warning is asking to be dismissed without consideration
and justifiably so: what better way to show that you can't take direction!
But even those which don't should be taken to *imply* this rule of thumb.
Indeed, I suggest that unless an audition notice explicitly states that
you SHOULD sing a song from the show, you should always play it safe and
avoid doing so. And if you don't know enough about the musical theatre
repertoire to know what song might be "very much like" (musically,
vocally, thematically, dramatically, etc.) one of the songs
sung by the character you long to play, ask Vocalist: some of us take
great delight in discovering the obvious and not-so-obvious "very much
like" alternatives to "The Impossible Dream" et al.
Karen Mercedes
............................
NEIL SHICOFF, TENORE SUPREMO
http://www.radix.net/~dalila/shicoff/shicoff.html
My Own Website
http://www.radix.net/~dalila/index.html
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+ I sing hymns with my spirit, +
+ but I also sing hymns with my mind. +
+ - 1 Corinthians 14:15 +
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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