Learn Wagner's Die Meistersinger first. The Overture to Die Meistersinger is on every audition list I have ever seen...youth orchestras, college ensembles, semi pro orchestras, major symphonies...you name it, they'll ask for it at the audition. Even many band auditions ask for the orchestral Die Meistersinger excerpt (there is a band arrangement of this piece too which isn't bad to know either).
And, to quote an earlier post of mine re: excerpts:
Tom wrote:The definitive collection would be Abe Torchinsky's "The Tuba Player's Orchestral Repertoire" series.
It is a collection of something like 15 or 16 volumes of complete tuba parts organized by composer and featuring a preface to each work by Abe Torchinsky himself.
They have been published by a number of publishers over the years, and most recently some of the volumes have been available from Encore Music Publishers.
The collection includes all of the major stuff like:
Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovitch, Stravinsky, Mahler, Wagner, and probably some others that I can't recall at the moment.
The set can be rounded out with the (out of print and hard to find) Torchinsky's "20th Century Orchestral Excerpts" book that contains works like Sensemaya, for example.
There are other tuba excerpt collections out there: Keith Brown's series (more trombone heavy, but includes tuba parts where applicable), Walter Sear's book(s) (available on ebay from time to time), and a few others whose exact names I can't remember at the moment.
