The Cincinnati Opera’s recent Summer at Summit series of concerts saw Carmen, Tosca and The Barber of Seville performed at by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Opera Chorus at Summit Park in the city of Blue Ash. While it offered everything expected of it – glorious singing, inspiring storytelling and enchanting music – what was unexpected was the outdoor setting.
Driven by the coronavirus pandemic, the event was an under-the-stars experience with the grandeur of opera theatre sound, thanks to the use of L-Acoustics’ L-ISA immersive technology provided by Firehouse Productions.
A system co-designed by Jonathan Burke, who directs the sound design program in the School of Theater, Film & Television at UCLA, drew on various of L-Acoustics’ range of technologies – 60 Kara II enclosures were configured as five arrays of a dozen enclosures each, all flown from towers and the stage canopy, as the Scene system. The arrays benefited from L-Acoustics Panflex horizontal steering, which assured coverage over the entire seating area extending 450ft from the stage.
In addition, 16 KS28 subs were arrayed in a centre arc on the ground, with nine Kiva II used as front fill along the edge of the stage above the subs. Additionally, six Syva colinear source loudspeakers were mounted on light poles at the rear of the seating area, using L-ISA’s Room Engine to provide the rear-surround array.
‘This was a unique deployment of L-ISA,’ says L-Acoustics Director of Applications for the Americas, Marcus Ross. ‘Due to weight restrictions on the outdoor stage, we had to disperse the Scene arrays wider than usual, instead of over the stage. It’s not how we normally configure speakers for L-ISA, but what this deployment did is show how flexible the system is. And it was also able to overcome a number of other challenges, including the fact that the seating was so widely dispersed – the first row was 50ft from the stage.’
The aim was to create an operatic experience outdoors: ‘We looked at how to add surround speakers in an inconspicuous way so that the illusion of reverb was built into the sound system from the start,’ says Burke, who spent a day at L-Acoustics Westlake Village studios familiarising himself with L-ISA and mixing object-based live audio before collaborating with Ross and L-Acoustics Application Engineer Jordan Tani on the system design. ‘I’ve spent some time working with immersive audio systems such as Dolby Atmos, but this is the first time I was going to mix immersive sound live it really is a new and wonderful world.’
Burke enjoyed being able to broaden the sound field through the L-ISA Processor, creating an enveloping soundscape for the audience, yet still being able to precisely place each instrument in that sound field exactly where it actually was on stage. ‘The spatialisation of the orchestra was spectacular – the harp, tympani and other elements were exactly where they were supposed to be, and the detail of each instrument was as if you were standing next to them,’ he says. ‘We could also get creative: we could widen out the chorus, for instance, and move other elements a bit upstage or downstage if we wanted.’
But he and the cast saved their greatest accolades for the L-ISA Room Engine functionality, which emulated a theatrical room environment so authentically that opera vocalists were amazed.
‘They said they really felt as though they were in an enclosed space, with reflections off of walls,’ he says. ‘There was no vocal monitoring, no foldback – they really felt supported by the “room”. On shows like this, I’ll usually have reverb on a fader I can bring up as needed, but on these shows, we needed none of that. The Room Engine created all of the ambience we needed and wanted.
‘Plus, the gain-before-feedback was great. We didn’t run our levels particularly loud, but the system gave us plenty of output and not a hint of feedback. Since no two objects summed together like a traditional system, we were able to get amazing detail and gain with minimal EQ because each object has its own unique relationship to the speakers and within the sound field.
‘This was a real eye-opener for me. L-ISA made everyone feel like they were truly in a theatre. I even began to creep in the sounds of the orchestra about ten minutes before the show began, so you could hear everyone tuning and warming up in the same sound environment, just as you would hear in a concert hall. It was all quite incredible.’
