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Tag Archives: Opera

Opera Takes a Field Trip with Lectrosonics

(l-r) Brad Galvin (SCS Engineer), Nikolas Wenzel (Valhalla Media), Christopher Willis (Mix Engineer)
(l-r) Brad Galvin (SCS Engineer), Nikolas Wenzel (Valhalla Media), Christopher Willis (Mix Engineer)

Chicago, IL (June 21, 2021)—Lectrosonics’ D Squared line was in the mix when Chicago Opera Theater live-streamed La Hija de Rappaccini, a contemporary opera based on a Nathaniel Hawthorne story composed by Daniel Catán, this past April.

Chicago Opera Theater’s audio and video production partner Valhalla Media teamed with location audio experts Second City Sound on A/V support for the performance, which streamed from the Field Museum of Natural History, in keeping with the botanical theme. Lectrosonics DBSMD transmitter-recorders fitted to the cast members were picked up by a pair of DSQD four-channel receivers. DCHT portable digital stereo transmitters joined an M2T for monitoring by the conductor and mission-critical crew via M2R receivers.

“Midway through the pre-production process, we found out that the opera would be live at the Field Museum,” says Nikolas Wenzel of Valhalla Media. “This presented all sorts of logistical challenges for coverage. My first thought was that for reinforcement of the vocalists, we were going to need something stable, reliable, and easy to use between different levels of the museum. One of the performance levels was on the floor of the great hall and another was tucked off up to the side.”

Baseball-Themed ‘Rigoletto’ Covers Bases, Audience

“One thing viewers of the stream didn’t see was that the Field Museum was active and open to the public during the show run,” adds Gerry Formicola of Second City Sound. “This meant that everything had to be set up each day, then struck and stored. The fact that the Lectro system was so quick and easy to get up and running made a huge difference here.”

“I was the guy who had to deal with all of that,” comments audio director Brad Galvin. “Twenty, maybe 25 minutes and we were good to go every time.”

The wideband range of the D Squared hardware was even more key to ensuring the cast’s singing was captured without a hitch. “Chicago may not be the worst place in the country in terms of RF density, but it’s certainly not the best. So, the name of the game is bandwidth because you tend to spread channels all over the spectrum,” says Galvin, who first encountered Lectrosonics while working with Formicola on the Oprah Winfrey show. “I did all the control from the Wireless Designer software, which I’d never used before. I was amazed at how easy it was to use.”

Lectrosonics • www.lectrosonics.com

Baseball-Themed ‘Rigoletto’ Covers Bases, Audience

A ground-stacked array of four Kiva enclosures was positioned behind the orchestra section at home plate for center stadium reinforcement for the Tulsa Opera performance.

Tulsa, OK (December 3, 2020)—Mention ballparks and singing to most people and they’ll picture Fenway Park belting “Sweet Caroline,” or maybe a half-sober round of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” at their local field. That’s fine – but what if you added opera singers? In fact, what if you flat-out staged an opera at a ballpark?

That’s what happened in Tulsa, Oklahoma on October 9 at ONEOK Field, home of the Tulsa Drillers minor league team. The Tulsa Opera staged a baseball-themed version of Verdi’s opera Rigoletto with the help of local sound provider Axiom Audio, which fielded an L-Acoustics Kara PA system to cover 1,685 socially-distanced audience members seated in the 2,700-capacity stadium.

Tulsa Opera performs a baseball-themed Rigoletto at ONEOK Field in Tulsa, Oklahoma
Tulsa Opera performs a baseball-themed Rigoletto at ONEOK Field in Tulsa, Oklahoma Shane Bevel

The system consisted of 24 Kara enclosures, six SB18 subs, and three four-speaker clusters of Kiva II used as center and sidefills, all powered by six LA12X and three LA4X amplified controllers. The components were on an Optocore fiber network that also included a DiGiCo SD10 FOH mixing console paired with two SD-Racks.

The event’s PA design was as unique as the venue itself. The stadium management wouldn’t allow rigging to be erected on the field’s grass areas, so the Kara speakers were loaded onto wheeled carts that lined the first and third baselines, four per side, facing the grandstands. A ninth cart was positioned at home plate, just in front of the low risers that were the stage for six orchestra members: two violins, viola, cello, bass and piano. This arrangement provided the necessary coverage for all of the widely-spaced grandstand seating.

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However, it also created the added challenge of putting loudspeakers on the field as the opera vocalists, unfamiliar with wearing wireless microphones, would roam about during the performance, creating the potential for feedback each time they neared a speaker cluster. The solution was to make each cart its own node on the system, putting each of the nine speaker pods on a matrix at the front of house, allowing Front-of-House engineer Steve Colby to turn off individual loudspeaker clusters as a performer approached one.

“We made the speakers individually controllable through the matrix,” said Axiom Audio president Ben Bruce. “Performers were moving all across the infield, and they’re opera singers, so they would be loud. Having individual control over the elements in what was essentially a distributed audio system greatly reduced the potential for gain-before-feedback. The Kara speakers were a perfect fit, in terms of size and power, for this.”

Colby added, “Kara’s coverage properties allowed for a large and effective stereo field between any two of the arrays deployed around the field,” he says. “As a result, we could pan vocals and effects a little farther apart than usual without diminishing the experience for audience members who were not centered between the arrays. In particular, this was noticeable with the amount of artificial acoustic ‘space’ we created using a touch of reverb. The available SPL and overall fidelity of the speakers are quite amazing given the compact size and light weight of the product.”

Tulsa Opera’s Rigoletto • www.tulsaopera.com/rigoletto

Axiom Audio • www.axiom.audio

L-Acoustics • www.l-acoustics.com

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