Auditioning for Phantom of the Opera

Been very busy with my private clients. Audition coaching is the order of the day, as this part of the year is notorious for the recasting of shows.

Had an interesting challenge last week. One of my clients arrived with the intention of auditioning for four different musicals in one audition. The panel she was playing to was ostensibly there to cast Avenue Q, but many of the panellists have interests in other shows. She had decided to aim for the four main shows that they work on - Avenue Q, Mary Poppins, Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables.

Now in terms of style, these four are about as far apart as you can get and still be called musicals. OK, granted there are no rock- or pop-based shows there, but it's still quite a mixed bag of music styles. Phantom is operetta/contemporary lyrical, Les Miserables is what we call in the Successful Singing Auditions book a Verismo musical (gritty and dramatic), Mary Poppins is an old-fashioned classic book musical (think Richard Rodgers music, although updated by Styles and Drew), and Avenue Q is a popular, disney-type musical with a cabaret feel and satirical lyrics.

In other words, there are no two songs in existence that will cover all those bases.

This is a problem I often see in my studio. "I need a song that shows everything". Well first of all, there isn't one, and second, if you try to show everything in 3 minutes, you'll end up showing nothing particularly well.

In this particular case, we decided that the client wanted to aim for the more classic end of the spectrum, so we chose songs to target Mary Poppins and Phantom of the Opera.

Phantom is an interesting one. Having played for many thousands of auditions for Phantom in London, I know that there is actually quite a wide range of repertoire that can be used. Successful singers in the past have used opera, operetta and Gilbert and Sullivan, or popular ballads, or standards with a story such as Gershwin or Cole Porter.

With the client aiming at Christine, we decided on How Could I Ever Know, from The Secret Garden. This is a lyrical ballad with a reasonably wide range. The role of Christine was written specifically for Sarah Brightman's voice, and although Christine famously has a high E to sing and a cadenza going to a D, most of the role sits in the middle and lower part of the range. There is quite a lot of narrative writing, and the song from The Secret Garden covers this.

You can often match songs from different musicals (or even decades) by choosing something to focus on. In this case, I chose Christine's dressing-room scene as a basis for repertoire choice. She sings to Raoul about "Little Lottie", a storybook tale that reflects her own life, and tells him of her new teacher. The text style (both narrative and personal), vocal range and the general feel of the writing has similarities to the song How Could I Ever Know.

I will also take into account not just the vocal range but the tessitura. This is the area within the vocal range in which the song sits. So if the total range was, say, low C to upper G but most of the song sits between low D and the D above (with only a few upper and lower notes), the tessitura is said to be D-D. Again, the tessitura of both songs are similar, so this together with the feel and emotion of the writing, makes one a good choice for the other's audition.

More on this in a later blog.

Incidentally, if you're interested in a private coaching session with me, you can contact my PA, Gunvor, to book a session.

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