Should You Learn a New Aria For an Audition?

I would like to step back from my usual brand of silliness for a moment and talk about an issue that is near and dear to my heart, and which has been plaguing opera singers (and probably other singers) for generations.  Namely, should you try to learn the aria from whatever show you are auditioning for, even if you have never sung it before?

I will give you an example.  Last week, I traveled to New York to audition for the roles of Don Ottavio and Lenski.  In both cases I had previously studied the arias from the respective shows, but never to the point of performance.  For the Eugene Onegin aria, I was never really able to get that dang Russian to stick in my brain, and for the two big arias from Don Giovanni, I had worked on them in a few lessons, but they were not memorized and I hadn’t really put them through their paces.  So I didn’t offer them at the auditions.  And in each case, I was asked if I could possibly sing them anyway, and I declined, although I am quite good at making up Russian on the fly.

When it comes to matters such as these, I turn to the two people I trust more than anyone in the world, my agent and my voice teacher.  They (almost) always agree on everything, but here they diverged.  My agent seemed a little disappointed that I had not learned them (even though when I found out about the auditions, I was in the middle of prepping my recital and had no time to work on anything else), and she felt that if I had presented the arias, I might have been offered the parts.  The Onegin people even asked if maybe I could quickly record the aria and send it to them, but that didn’t end up happening.  So my agent really feels that, even if they are not 100% perfect, the people casting just want to hear how my voice sounds in those roles, and I can blow them away with my other stuff.

My voice teacher says absolutely not.  You should never just throw something together for an audition.  You want to showcase you at your best, and some of my arias I have been working on for years!  It generally takes at least 4 voice lessons or coachings on something before I really feel that I am doing it up to par, and I spend a lot of intensive work on adjusting the tenuto here, or fine-tuning a portamento there.  I spend time perfecting every phrase, and I think it shows (most of the time) in my auditions.  According to my voice teacher, if you bring in something moderately close to the style of the show they are doing, and they can’t figure out if you would also be good singing that show, then they are idiots and that is their problem.

He also says that it is not worth spending the time and energy learning an aria from a show that is not done very often, or that you will probably not sing a lot.  Of course, if they are doing Faust, and I already know the aria from Faust, absolutely I should bring it.  Duh.  And he agrees that I ought to learn the Don Ottavio arias anyway, since I will probably sing that role at some point.  But I would not present those arias at an audition until I had really worked out the kinks.

There is also the issue of time and resources.  If I had unlimited time and resources and was sitting around all day doing nothing, then sure,’ I could try to learn a new aria in a week or two, and really work the heck out of it.  But I am home watching two kids all day and making pizza at night.  I’m lucky if I get any singing in at all on a typical day.  But I don’t really know what the norm is.

Hey opera singers!  What would you do?  Do you learn new arias for auditions?  If so, do they generally go well?  Has anyone ever been annoyed because you did not bring the aria from the show they are doing?  I’d love some feedback.