The Scorpion
09-18-2006, 07:14 AM
I posted once about this ongoing project last year looking for male voices and now I am in immediate need of four females!
This project to do a complete audiobook recording of Gaston Leroux's Phantom of the Opera with different voices for each character began on The Phantom of the Opera message board last year and most of the roles were filled there some time ago, however, after battling for months with voice actors who could not turn in their lines despite many deadline extensions, we are opening up the characters again to anyone who sounds the part and is willing to be responsible!
For those who have not read it, Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera is a 1911 gothic mystery novel that tells the story of the strange goings on at the Paris Opera house in the late 1800s as it is plagued by a mysterious Phantom who, besides making demands of the Opera company, is also very much interested in guiding the career of a singer there, Christine, whose would-be-suitor, Raoul, is left lost as he fights to unravel the mystery of the "Ghost."
There are three direct English translations of the original French book. One of these translations (by Alexandre DeMattos, uncredited) is incomplete, however, it is the best recognized. We will primarily be using the translation by Lowell Bair, but will also incorporate phrasings from DeMattos' as well as the one by Leonard Wolf. The DeMattos translation is available in many places online (you can find it at www.bibliomania.com (http://www.bibliomania.com/) for one!), but you would need to find a copy of Bair's somehow yourself. (I know it's being sold used on Amazon.com for 1 cent!)
This post is for our desperate need to recast four of the female roles in Chapter 1. For those who know the book, Chapter 1 has more female voices in it than any other chapter! We will very likely need additional voices for later chapters, but as we are producing sequentially, we can’t go anywhere until we complete the much-delayed Chapter 1.
Chapter 1 scripted: http://www.angelfire.com/un/lakeaverne/chap_1.htm
The open parts are two larger ones and two smaller ones. The main problem we have had with casting these parts is that we are looking for voices that sound of the era. A ballerina in the 1880s would not sound like a modern valley girl or a saucy teenager.
Please use a Standard American or, if it is natural to you, a British accent. This is a French book translated into English. They are French people speaking French and so hearing a translation of that into English would not mean they are speaking English with French accents, so use accents that are natural to the English language, speaking in a Victorian manner.
Open parts:
Cast: Refi-chan Sorelli, the prima ballerina: 20s, medium/low to contrast with the higher, girlish enthusiasm of the younger girls. Somewhat the mother hen of the group and attempts to maintain a brave front, but is as superstitious as the younger girls, in fact even moreso.
She is slightly stern and haughty, yet also frightened and really not that much more mature than the others, and is also described as particularly lacking in brains.
Audition lines:
Line 1: (in a strained voice) Who’s there? (bravely, over loudly) Is there someone out there in the hall?
Line 2:Little one, you’re making fun of us. You don’t really expect us to believe that silly story, do you?
Cast: GenesisAvalon Jammes, one of the little ballerinas: A Victorian 15, medium-high/high. Is more talkative, and fast-talking, than the rest of the girls and feels she has a right to be the center of attention, as she knows more than they do about the Ghost. She is melodramatic though her terror is very real.
Audition line:
That’s right, he was in evening dress. Gabriel told me so himself. That’s how he recognized him, in fact. Here’s how it happened: Gabriel was in the stage manager’s office. All at once the door opened and the Persian came in. You know the Persian has the evil eye. . . .
(She tells the rest of her story ever so quickly, as though the ghost were at her heels, and is quite out of breath at the finish)
And you know how superstitious Gabriel is. However, he is always polite. When he meets the Persian, he just puts his hand in his pocket and touches his keys. Well, the moment the Persian appeared in the doorway, Gabriel gave one jump from his chair to the lock of the cupboard, so as to touch iron! In doing so, he tore a whole skirt of his overcoat on a nail. Hurrying to get out of the room, he banged his forehead against a hat-peg and gave himself a huge bump; then, suddenly stepping back, he skinned his arm on the screen, near the piano; he tried to lean on the piano, but the lid fell on his hands and crushed his fingers; he rushed out of the office like a madman, slipped on the staircase and came down the whole of the first flight on his back. I was just passing with mother. We picked him up. He was covered with bruises and his face was all over blood. We were frightened out of our lives, but, all at once, he began to thank Providence that he had got off so cheaply. Then he told us what had frightened him. He had seen the ghost behind the Persian, the ghost with the death's head just like Joseph Buquet's description!
Cast: LeChat Meg, one of the little ballerinas: A Victorian 15,medium/high. She is the quieter one of the group because she knows better to keep quiet, however she is very easily convinced to spill what she knows, though she tells her story with the utmost trepidation and is certainly not as enthusiastically gossipy as the others, though she does get caught up in the excitement at points despite her better judgment.
Meg reappears at the beginning of Chapter 2 very briefly and the person cast in this part will be required to record those lines as well.
Audition lines:
Line 1:Not so loud! It’s Box Five. You know, the one next to the stage box in the first left tier.
Line2: Well, that’s the Ghost’s box. No one has been in it for more than a month—no one but the ghost, that is—and the administration has been ordered never to rent it again.
Line 3: No, it’s not possible to see him! He doesn’t have a black coat or a head. You’ve heard about his death’s-head and his head of fire, but that’s all nonsense. He doesn’t have anything. . . . One can only hear him when he’s in the box. Mama has never seen him, but she’s heard him. And she really knows he can’t be seen because she’s the one who gives him his program!
Line 4: (bursts into tears) I should have kept my mouth shut! If Mama ever finds out . . . But it’s certain that Joseph Buquet is wrong to stick his nose into things that are none of his business. It will bring him bad luck. Mama said so just last night.
Cast: Rosegirl 18 One of the other little ballerinas (#2): A Victorian 15, high/very high. Childish and obnoxious and easily fixated.
Audition lines:
Line 1: And he was in evening dress, in broad daylight?
Line 2: (stage whispering annoyingly loudly) And why does she say that?
Line 3: (interrupting) Since he wears a black swallow-tail coat
Record your audition clips as MP3, 44,100KhZ Stereo
Please record all audition lines in one continuous clip. In your recordings, be sure to begin with stating your username and which character(s) you are reading. Also save your file with a clearly labeled filename with your name and the character. If you want to do several takes in different ways, that is fine, just do them all on the same mp3.
Upload your audition clips to YouSendIt.com (or something similar) and send them to me in a PM or email to sinfullyerik@hotmail.com (sinfullyerik@hotmail.com)(You can also e-mail directly as an attachment if you must)
The deadline for auditions for these four parts is SUNDAY NIGHT September 24th. If we do not hear enough people that sound right to voice 1880s ballerinas (as has been our past struggle with too-modern-sounding voices), we will extend the deadline in order to listen to more.
Post any questions you have in this thread or contact me personally any way you like.
~The Scorpion
Recieved Auditions from:
Romana
Refi-chan
GenesisAvalon
Jiah
Sanchu
LeChat
Morwinyon
juliet42
Rosegirl18
Ishi
Sakka
Mirielle
Michelleann
This project to do a complete audiobook recording of Gaston Leroux's Phantom of the Opera with different voices for each character began on The Phantom of the Opera message board last year and most of the roles were filled there some time ago, however, after battling for months with voice actors who could not turn in their lines despite many deadline extensions, we are opening up the characters again to anyone who sounds the part and is willing to be responsible!
For those who have not read it, Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera is a 1911 gothic mystery novel that tells the story of the strange goings on at the Paris Opera house in the late 1800s as it is plagued by a mysterious Phantom who, besides making demands of the Opera company, is also very much interested in guiding the career of a singer there, Christine, whose would-be-suitor, Raoul, is left lost as he fights to unravel the mystery of the "Ghost."
There are three direct English translations of the original French book. One of these translations (by Alexandre DeMattos, uncredited) is incomplete, however, it is the best recognized. We will primarily be using the translation by Lowell Bair, but will also incorporate phrasings from DeMattos' as well as the one by Leonard Wolf. The DeMattos translation is available in many places online (you can find it at www.bibliomania.com (http://www.bibliomania.com/) for one!), but you would need to find a copy of Bair's somehow yourself. (I know it's being sold used on Amazon.com for 1 cent!)
This post is for our desperate need to recast four of the female roles in Chapter 1. For those who know the book, Chapter 1 has more female voices in it than any other chapter! We will very likely need additional voices for later chapters, but as we are producing sequentially, we can’t go anywhere until we complete the much-delayed Chapter 1.
Chapter 1 scripted: http://www.angelfire.com/un/lakeaverne/chap_1.htm
The open parts are two larger ones and two smaller ones. The main problem we have had with casting these parts is that we are looking for voices that sound of the era. A ballerina in the 1880s would not sound like a modern valley girl or a saucy teenager.
Please use a Standard American or, if it is natural to you, a British accent. This is a French book translated into English. They are French people speaking French and so hearing a translation of that into English would not mean they are speaking English with French accents, so use accents that are natural to the English language, speaking in a Victorian manner.
Open parts:
Cast: Refi-chan Sorelli, the prima ballerina: 20s, medium/low to contrast with the higher, girlish enthusiasm of the younger girls. Somewhat the mother hen of the group and attempts to maintain a brave front, but is as superstitious as the younger girls, in fact even moreso.
She is slightly stern and haughty, yet also frightened and really not that much more mature than the others, and is also described as particularly lacking in brains.
Audition lines:
Line 1: (in a strained voice) Who’s there? (bravely, over loudly) Is there someone out there in the hall?
Line 2:Little one, you’re making fun of us. You don’t really expect us to believe that silly story, do you?
Cast: GenesisAvalon Jammes, one of the little ballerinas: A Victorian 15, medium-high/high. Is more talkative, and fast-talking, than the rest of the girls and feels she has a right to be the center of attention, as she knows more than they do about the Ghost. She is melodramatic though her terror is very real.
Audition line:
That’s right, he was in evening dress. Gabriel told me so himself. That’s how he recognized him, in fact. Here’s how it happened: Gabriel was in the stage manager’s office. All at once the door opened and the Persian came in. You know the Persian has the evil eye. . . .
(She tells the rest of her story ever so quickly, as though the ghost were at her heels, and is quite out of breath at the finish)
And you know how superstitious Gabriel is. However, he is always polite. When he meets the Persian, he just puts his hand in his pocket and touches his keys. Well, the moment the Persian appeared in the doorway, Gabriel gave one jump from his chair to the lock of the cupboard, so as to touch iron! In doing so, he tore a whole skirt of his overcoat on a nail. Hurrying to get out of the room, he banged his forehead against a hat-peg and gave himself a huge bump; then, suddenly stepping back, he skinned his arm on the screen, near the piano; he tried to lean on the piano, but the lid fell on his hands and crushed his fingers; he rushed out of the office like a madman, slipped on the staircase and came down the whole of the first flight on his back. I was just passing with mother. We picked him up. He was covered with bruises and his face was all over blood. We were frightened out of our lives, but, all at once, he began to thank Providence that he had got off so cheaply. Then he told us what had frightened him. He had seen the ghost behind the Persian, the ghost with the death's head just like Joseph Buquet's description!
Cast: LeChat Meg, one of the little ballerinas: A Victorian 15,medium/high. She is the quieter one of the group because she knows better to keep quiet, however she is very easily convinced to spill what she knows, though she tells her story with the utmost trepidation and is certainly not as enthusiastically gossipy as the others, though she does get caught up in the excitement at points despite her better judgment.
Meg reappears at the beginning of Chapter 2 very briefly and the person cast in this part will be required to record those lines as well.
Audition lines:
Line 1:Not so loud! It’s Box Five. You know, the one next to the stage box in the first left tier.
Line2: Well, that’s the Ghost’s box. No one has been in it for more than a month—no one but the ghost, that is—and the administration has been ordered never to rent it again.
Line 3: No, it’s not possible to see him! He doesn’t have a black coat or a head. You’ve heard about his death’s-head and his head of fire, but that’s all nonsense. He doesn’t have anything. . . . One can only hear him when he’s in the box. Mama has never seen him, but she’s heard him. And she really knows he can’t be seen because she’s the one who gives him his program!
Line 4: (bursts into tears) I should have kept my mouth shut! If Mama ever finds out . . . But it’s certain that Joseph Buquet is wrong to stick his nose into things that are none of his business. It will bring him bad luck. Mama said so just last night.
Cast: Rosegirl 18 One of the other little ballerinas (#2): A Victorian 15, high/very high. Childish and obnoxious and easily fixated.
Audition lines:
Line 1: And he was in evening dress, in broad daylight?
Line 2: (stage whispering annoyingly loudly) And why does she say that?
Line 3: (interrupting) Since he wears a black swallow-tail coat
Record your audition clips as MP3, 44,100KhZ Stereo
Please record all audition lines in one continuous clip. In your recordings, be sure to begin with stating your username and which character(s) you are reading. Also save your file with a clearly labeled filename with your name and the character. If you want to do several takes in different ways, that is fine, just do them all on the same mp3.
Upload your audition clips to YouSendIt.com (or something similar) and send them to me in a PM or email to sinfullyerik@hotmail.com (sinfullyerik@hotmail.com)(You can also e-mail directly as an attachment if you must)
The deadline for auditions for these four parts is SUNDAY NIGHT September 24th. If we do not hear enough people that sound right to voice 1880s ballerinas (as has been our past struggle with too-modern-sounding voices), we will extend the deadline in order to listen to more.
Post any questions you have in this thread or contact me personally any way you like.
~The Scorpion
Recieved Auditions from:
Romana
Refi-chan
GenesisAvalon
Jiah
Sanchu
LeChat
Morwinyon
juliet42
Rosegirl18
Ishi
Sakka
Mirielle
Michelleann