The rule of thumb for each appears to be this:
OPERA: Sing an aria from the role for which you are auditioning. If you're
auditioning for a role that doesn't have its own aria, sing an aria from
the opera or by the same composer. Opera auditors like to hear as many
singers as possible singing the same aria, so they can compare the singers
with each other, with their own notions of how the aria should be sung,
and with their memories of how other singers have sung it. Apparently,
opera auditors are also people of very little imagination, who have a very
hard time envisioning a singer in a particular role unless the singer
sings the aria from that role - no matter that the aria he/she does sing
is at least as vocally challenging, has comparable range, tessitura, and
dramatic qualities, etc.
MUSICAL THEATRE: Unless explicitly requested, do NOT sing a song from the
musical for which you are auditioning. Instead, sing a song that is as
close as possible to the song that the character you want to play sings in
the musical - i.e., same composer, same type of character, etc. For
example, someone auditioning for the role of Mother Superior in SOUND OF
MUSIC should not sing "Climb ev'ry mountain". Instead, she should sing
"When you walk through a storm" from CAROUSEL - which is essentially the
same song, sung by essentially the same character, but coincidentally in a
different Rodgers & Hammerstein musical. Unlike opera auditors, musical
theatre auditors apparently have very little patience, and dread hearing
ANY song more than once in an audition, and also have a very strange
mindset that prevents them from actually hearing the performance of a
singer who dares to sing a song from the musical without automatically
making all sorts of negative comparisons between that singer's
interpretation and their own already set-in-concrete idea of how the song
SHOULD be performed. At least, these are the reasons I've been given for
why it's wrong to do in musical theatre auditions exactly what I'm
supposed to do in opera auditions.
KM
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My NEIL SHICOFF Website:
http://www.radix.net/~dalila/shicoff/shicoff.html
My Website:
http://www.radix.net/~dalila/index.html
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Es en balde, majo mio, que sigas hablando
porque hay cosas que contesto yo
siempre cantando:
Tra la la...
Por mas que preguntes tanto:
tra la la...
En mi no causas quebranto
ni yo he de salir de mi canto:
tra la la...
- Fernando Periquet
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