Some of this is indeed generational snobbery. "These kids today just do not appreciate the real craftmanship of making a proper catapult."
I get that sometimes people are in a bind. You'll notice no one jumped on the poor woman whose mother died who needs the music ASAP. If I had the arrangement she needs and some way to make a pdf from home I would most certainly send it to her.
A few things...
For a scenes program etc it's perfectly reasonable to ask where you are going to start/stop the scene. If that's the question there is someone to ask and it's not random strangers on the internet.
But most importantly and the reason this irritates so many of us is that the knowledge we need is not easily required and it does involve listening to countless recordings and flipping through countless scores and I guess these days watching hours and hours of youtube clips (there's some good stuff on there and I'm jealous that wasn't around when I was in undergrad). People hae this knowledge to give because they didn't take the shortcuts (at least not most of the time). So why is it okay to ask for the knowledge gained from doing the work like looking at the whole score and not just the one aria you need for auditions.
No I don't have a lot of patience for people whose only interest in opera and music in general is their own tiny sliver of the reportoire. I'll admit to not being able to keep straight the titles of every soprano bel canto aria (people have to remind me of which one is from which opera) but then I don't expect coloraturas to remember the same info about the various Wagner excerpts either. It's okay not to know everything. Truth be told even Philip Gossett doesn't have ALL of this in his head (although he probably comes closest of anyone on the planet). But you should at least want to have some idea of what the rest of the role is like.
No one complains when someone asks what is the standard cut for auditions or where people tend to stop in modern operas where it's not perfectly clear. And it's a good thing there are people around who know that sort of thing. But you learn the repertoire by studying scores and listening to recordings, watching videos and going to live performances. There's no shortcut to this and the people who don't do it are pretty much always obviously shallow in their presentation. So no I can't respect that. I pity the people who only want the tiny bits of information they need right now. Yes we are always in a hurry but there's no shortcut to creating or in our case recreating great art.
Houndentenor
"Get the trash off the street and back on the stage where it belongs." -- Bette Midler
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