Although an opera, Sound Designer Michael Waters approached the show as a musical theatre with reinforced and amplified audio.
For most of the show, the 14-piece orchestra is hidden by a very thick curtain, and Waters was determined to engineer a realistic orchestral sound in the room.
“It didn’t sound amplified, but it was,” he said. “The more significant challenge was the staging, as the main stage was a thrust and comes down to a satellite stage. So, the performance continually goes up and down the stage, hovering on the thrust, hovering at the satellite, or hovering up at the main stage end. So I had to design a multi-zoned system.”
The overhead speakers along the stage and thrust were divided into three zones, as were the frontfills embedded into the stage. The orchestra mixes were then delayed through each zone back to the orchestra stage.
Waters wanted to ensure that the actors’ voices moved in the space with them and was intent on tracking them wherever they were. There are applicable tracking systems on the market, but budget and time did not allow them.
“We had about 45 nanoseconds to get the show in and open,” he explained. “It just so happened that Sydney Theatre Company has a Meyer Sound Spacemap Go system, so I decided to utilise that. Hayley Forward, my sound associate, and I had to, with the stopwatch, count how many seconds an actor would go from upstage to downstage, stop in the middle stage and then re-ignite to move them upstage again or downstage, wherever they were in space. We spent much time plotting Spacemap movements to determine the actors’ locations. Then blocking would change from rehearsal to rehearsal, but fortunately, we’d video the rehearsal and use it to adjust the plotting.”
The venue is used in rep every day for different cabaret shows. Waters, Forward and Michael Wilkie from CODA Audio had to ensure that the audio system could accommodate more rock’n’roll-type shows rather than light and operatic ones.
Waters says the production was a potpourri of personnel and equipment, including audio gear, a mixture of STC’s equipment, and hire from CODA Audio. The venue’s Meyer sound system comprises X40s and X20s for the multiple zones around the mainstage, thrust, delays, and surrounds, and some UPM-1s in the rear delay world. It also comprises a couple of 900 LFC subs in the air, with Coda supplying a couple more for the floor. Control was Coda’s Yamaha DM7.
“To be honest, I can’t remember who supplied what in terms of the foldback, which were Meyer MM4XP’s; there was no chance that the cast would ever hear the orchestra if we didn’t do foldback for them,” added Waters. “Coda supplied all the orchestra mics and the radio mics.”
Waters describes the microphone set-up as ‘nothing fancy-pants’ with budget considerations at the forefront. He had hoped to get DPA 6061s and 6066s, but they’re not in the rental inventory, and it would have been a costly exercise to purchase them. Consequently, he had to go with the older flavour DPA 4066s and DPA 4061s for the cast. The orchestra mics included Shure 57s, Beyerdynamic M88s, many Neumann KM85s and DPA 4099s on all the strings, AKG 414s and a couple of DPA 2011s.
It’s not often that opera has amplified audio. Waters describes the operatic voice as an interesting and challenging instrument to faithfully recreate electronically. He says the key is not to have the microphone too close to the mouth.
“You want distance from the mouth to the mic, and you’ve got to be very judicious with the compression because if you over-compress it, it sounds unnatural,” he noted. “However, if you don’t compress those voices, they will peak through the speaker system, and you’ll be wiping blood from your ears. So you’ve got to manage the compression side of things very carefully. And, of course, it’s up to the operator to know when those big belts will occur and mix accordingly. But sometimes, they can take you by surprise!”
Most audiences would not know how much work goes into staging a show, such as Seigfried & Roy. As Waters succinctly put it, ‘Jesus Christ, we’re doing a lot of work, and no one will fucking even notice’!
“It was a lot of long, hard days, but it was a thoroughly enjoyable project,” he said. “It was lots of fun, and everybody was fantastic. It was a great experience.”
This article originally appeared in the February issue of Lighting & Sound International magazine.
