CSO Audition Script

Mozart - Marriage of Figaro Overture

Actor (stumbles onto the stage): My goodness! What was all of that about?

ELIAS: I’m sorry … Do you mean the music?

Actor: (Sarcastically) No - I’m talking about all these elephants walking around. Yes, of

course I mean the music! Didn’t you think there were just a few too many notes in

there? My goodness, it was so frantic, nervous and fast. And then it was suddenly relaxed and

lyrical… and then frenetic all over again! The nervous system can only take so much.

ELIAS: I have to beg to disagree! I think Mr. Mozart put in exactly the right number of notes

there - notes designed to excite you, thrill you, maybe calm you down for a little bit before

surprising you all over again! That was the Overture to his Marriage of Figaro - a silly opera

full of crazy hijinks, pranks, and jokes, but also some beautiful moments of deep reflection

and love. Of course he needed to write an overture that’s full of witty jokes and fun

surprises!

Actor: Whatever you say, I guess, but in my professional capacity I wouldn’t

recommend putting a piece like that on a concert.

ELIAS: I’m sorry, what professional capacity is that? Who are you?

Actor: Well I’m Philip Harmonic, professional Musician Consultant. But you can call me

“Phil” for short. I am a professional adviser to musicians!

ELIAS: My goodness - I didn’t realize we had a professional adviser here! How serious.

And how do you normally advise musicians?

Actor: Well, I always advise musicians to be as predictable as possible. Musicians

should always play the same music! They should play it the same way! Simple music,

and no surprises! Look, I have a whole system, a REVOLUTIONARY, PROVEN, 7-STEP

method, if you will. And when musicians follow my system, they’ll never make any

mistakes. And not making mistakes is, obviously, the most important part of being a

musician.

ELIAS: Wow, well I’m not sure we have time to hear about revolutionary, proven 7-step

methods, but I think we’ve got a piece here that you’d like!

Actor: And what’s that?

ELIAS: It’s Haydn’s 94th symphony. Can you believe he wrote so many symphonies? He

wrote 104 in total. A little surprising, right?

Actor: I’m not surprised at all - I’m sure Haydn got quite good at writing them! Let’s hear it.

Haydn - Symphony No. 94, Mvt II m. 1-16 (end of bar)

Actor screams in shock at the “surprise”: Oh my GOODNESS! What was that?!

ELIAS: That’s the surprise!

Actor: Are you trying to give me a heart attack?! Everything was going just swimmingly

up until that crazy loud chord! Oh my goodness, why would Haydn do that?!

ELIAS: Because he had a good sense of humor, of course! He wanted to shock and delight

his audience and maybe make them laugh out loud

Actor: I’m not laughing! Can’t you tone it down a little bit?

ELIAS: Hm, I bet we can. One sec, let me check with everyone. (to the orchestra) Hey

everyone can we tone down the surprise?

ORCHESTRA (nodding and mumbling in agreement): Yeah, yeah…

Haydn - Symphony No. 94, Mvt II m. 1-16 (end of bar) with cymbal crash and bass drum hit

on m. 16 beat 2

Actor *screams in shock again at the “surprise”: WHAT! You made it even worse!

ELIAS: Well, you shouldn’t have told us to mess with it! Listen, Mr. Harmonic - the surprise

is the whole point. Haydn loved a good joke; in fact, this whole movement is full of littlejokes. There’s the silly theme - it sounds like a cute children’s song. Then, when you least

expect it – BAM – the surprise chord. But then the music goes back to normal like nothing

has happened at all. And that’s only the beginning. After that, Haydn transforms the cute

melody into all kinds of creative and crazy new things. There might be a pretty, flowing, and

graceful section, there might be a great big, fancy, serious one, there might even be a scary,

stormy, flashy show-off moment - who knows? Don’t you want to hear it all together? Here,

see if you can spot all the jokes!

Actor: Fine - but I won’t enjoy it one bit.

Haydn - Symphony No. 94, Mvt II

Actor (trying to pretend he didn’t enjoy it): Oh my goodness! Well, I didn’t like it one bit.

I definitely didn’t like when the music shrugged off the big crash and carried on like

nothing had happened! I definitely didn't enjoy how Haydn took that ridiculous little

tune and made it sound so beautiful and then so serious, and I mean… It was awful.

Terrible! The worst thing I've ever heard. Can you play it again??