What song would be good for my audition?

How about Some Enchanted Evening or Old Man River? Granted they are not exactly Gilbert and Sullivan sounding tunes but they are good songs for a bass or baritone to sing.

The Major General’s main song in the show is a “patter” song. So whatever you choose, it should be an up-tempo, very wordy song to show the casting director that you have excellent diction and can enunciate the lyrics quickly and clearly. Come to think of it, why not just learn the Major General’s song?

I have been contemplating just learning the song, however I’m not sure if they’ll want songs from the show if they’re going to be hearing the same ones all day.

Just wondering if anyone could think of a song that was similar in style at all.

There are a TON of songs that are parodies of that one. It’s probably one of the most borrowed tunes out there. You could sing all of the parts of the periodic table or all the nations in the world to it (YouTube for order/reference). Or search for a list of parodies of it, I’m sure there is one out there. It would let them hear you sing that song without actually singing that song. They get the tune and funny new lyrics.

This kind of thing might be frowned upon, though. I have no idea, having never auditioned for anything.

Oklahoma?

Tom Lehrer’s “The Elements” uses the melody . Lehrer sings it at breakneck speed.

http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/IEC/elementsong.html

First verse: (take a huge breath):

There’s antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium
And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium,
And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium,
Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium
And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium
And gold, protactinium and indium and gallium
And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.

Danny Kaye does a similar patter song (same melody) about Russian composers.

Tschaikowsky(song), by Ira Gershwin and Kurt Weill,

With adjustments to Gershwin’s spelling, here are the Russian composers mentioned in the song, in order: Maliszewski, Rubinstein, Arensky, Tchaikovsky, Sapellnikoff, Dmitriev, Tscherepnin, Kryjanovsky, Godowsky, Artiboucheff, Moniuszko, Akimenko, Soloviev, Prokofiev, Tiomkin, Korestchenko, Glinka, Winkler, Bortniansky, Rebikoff, Ilyinsky, Medtner, Balakirev, Zolotarev, Kvoschinsky, Sokolov, Kopyloff, Dukelsky, Klenovsky, Shostakovich, Borodin, Glière, Nowakowsky, Lyadov, Karganoff, Markevitch, Pantschenko, Dargomyzhsky, Stcherbatcheff, Scriabin, Vassilenko, Stravinsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Gretchaninoff, Glazunov, César Cui, Kalinnikov, Rachmaninov, and Rumshinsky.

Some Enchanted Evening! That will turn heads if you can pull it off.

Good luck with your audition!!!

Some Enchanted Evening is such a beautiful piece!

but I’d never be able to pull off an operatic voice like that… =P