Bizet's Carmen is reputedly the most famous and most performed opera in the world. No prodution could have been quite so spectacular and ambitious as Radio France's in-the round spectacular at the 80,000-capacity Stade de France in Paris.
With such a vast audience, more than 160 musicians, a choir, a cast of 500 and a few horses, the challenge of delivering audio quality and clarity to every seat in the house gave rise to some innovative solutions as well as opportunities to test new technologies for the first time in such a show.
The initial conversations about the sound design for Carmen were held at the Avignon Festival in July 2002, between show designer Andre Serre, sound designer Fred Viricel, sound co-ordinator Eric Lambertin of AEC Audiomedias and Didier Dal Fitto of DV2, the company which supports Adamson distributors throughout Europe.
Serre had heard good things about Adamson's capabilities, especially in the field of classical music and invited rental company Lagoona, along with the support of DV2, to pre-production testing in March of this year. Testing proved positive and main sound contractor Lagoona was brought on board to provide the main part of a three-stage system.
Viricel's design in the Stade de France was based on a concept derived from one of the theatre venues in Avignon. The 2,000-capacity, architecturally sensitive theatre has no facility for hanging speaker cabinets so small drivers are mounted on the back of every seat. With the level set the same as the sound level from the stage, plus a slight delay, the Haas effect gives the audience the impression of hearing what is on the stage along with the reinforced sound from the seat back speaker.
With the distances involved at the Stade de France, the Haas effect could not be employed but, utilising a second system of no less that 444 six-inch, 100 volt speakers, attached to the barriers at the front of each of the stadium's three tiers, Viricel created a second system for extra reinforcement of vocals and spoken word.
The third part of the system, using the stadium's own installed Nexo Alpha cabinets, was used for special effects (mainly thunder, lightning and rain while TPi was attempting to interview the sound crew!).
AUDIENCE IN TIERS
The seating at the stadium is arranged in three tiers, the height of which is not uniform. This called for presice targeting of the main, ground stacked system. Enter DV2's Dal Fitto and his Y-Axis 'Shooter' software. The software enables the designer to choose an array and target the sound accurately. The system chosen was 16 stacks, with one sub each and either five or six Y10 cabinets, depending on the height of the stadium at each point.
With installation taking just 12 hours (TPi wondered if this included a proper French lunch break), the task of equalisation and time alignment was again down to Monsieur Dal Fitto. With a potential nightmare involving cabling for measurement devices in such a large venue, the boffin department at Sennheiser UK (coincidentally an Adamson distributor) created a specially tailored wireless system with no compression or high pass filters, ideal for measuring devices. This swift, painless removal of a cabling conundrum enabled swift EQ and alignment.
Responsibility for the supply of mixing and microphones was taken by Radio France. With such a large amount of musicians and singers the microphone list read like a who's who of manufacturers. Wireless was again provided by Sennheiser for mics and in-ears. The soloists were in possession of wireless DPA 4066s, the 120 strong choir covered by 12 Schoeps NK4Vs. Strings were DPA apart from the double bass which was AKG C414. Woodwind and horns were all Neumann KM84.
FOH mixing was an all-digital affair. Effects were triggered from ProTools via a Yamaha 02R from which two channels became the first of three mix layers in the main front of house desk, an Innova Son Sensory Large Scale. The second layer, consisting of the young choir and soloist channels (40 in total) was mixed on the new SY80 board from Innova Son before being added to the choir, orchestra and FX on the main console. Final mix duties were left to engineer Laurent Fracchia.
WHERE'S THE MULTICORE?
The rise and rise of the digital domain in the live sound environment was further accelerated in the Stade de France by the debut of Digigram's Ethersound technology in a large-scale live production.
The Ethersound system was simplicity itself. consisting of ES8in/ES8out audio bridges. Eight analogue channels were fed from the front of house console into a single ES8 in which converted the signals to as many Ethersound channels. Sixteen Ethersound ES8out boxes were placed near to each of the 16 Adamson stacks; these converted the signal back to analogue, handing over to XTA control and Lab.Gruppen amplification. Four of the ES8outs had an additional output to relay the vocal mix to each of four sections of the 100 volt system.
To ensure reliability - let's face it, there were horses running around the place - a second 'daisy chain' network was in place, ready to be switched over in case of cable damage. The conrol computer for the whole installation was located close to the front of house position, giving diagnostics and control throughout the set-up and performance.
The results of this experimentation and digital debut was a system that delivered vocals with clarity and dynamics in abundance. Simple as that. As for the opera itself, the girl died. An inevitability as reliable as the audio.