44 l December 2013 livereport UNITED STATES 760
The setting for this unique production was LA’s iconic Union Station, the so-called ‘Last of the Great Railway Stations’ built in the USA
Alight here for Invisible Cities
Union Station in Los Angeles was the setting for an unusual operatic performance – and a wireless one too. Mel Lambertreports
SENNHEISER RECENTLY supplied several hundred wireless headphones, IEMs and RF microphones for a unique operatic production that involved vocalists and dancers wandering through the world- famous Union Station in downtown Los Angeles as the audience participated in a unique collaborative arts event. “Invisible Cities was an opera without a stage,” explains artistic director Yuval Sharon, speaking at the end of its 22-performance season. The performers and audience were free to journey within the public spaces of the station – famous for its exemplary 1930s period architecture – as they interacted with the rush of departing passengers and greetings from arriving ones. The 70-minute opera was based on Italo Calvino’s 1972 novel Invisible Cities, with music and libretto composed by Christopher Cerrone using fictional conversations between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. The event was co-produced by The Industry and the L.A. Dance Project. “Every time we go travelling,
we’re just searching for something in ourselves we can’t otherwise find,” muses Sharon. “But our audience did not see sets, as in traditional theatre;
moment. A friend from The Industry mentioned having contacts at Sennheiser – one thing led to another, and [the company] quickly jumped into the deep end with us!” Mixing duties, handled in a back-stage area by Nick Tipp, centred around a 12-fader DiGiCo SD11 digital console that produced a stereo balance
Rod Allen and chief engineer Andrew McHaddad, who designed the managed-antenna system. The latter was made up of a combination of Sennheiser A2003-UHF passive directional antennas and A5000-CP UHF antennas in a four-zone configuration interlinked via 760m of cabling to a MAS-500 Series rack. “A unique complication for the antenna design came because Union Station is in continual use,” McHaddad recalls, “so we needed to strike and then re- install the antenna systems after each performance.” For orchestra miking, the sound designer elected to use a variety of Neumann KM 184 and U87 models, in addition to Sennheiser e908 and e914 units. “The new Digital 9000 eight- channel wireless system was a logical choice for the singers, since it offers uncompressed audio and artifact-free sound with great dynamics,” Gimenez continues. “We used digital channels as the primary RF link, with SK9000 body-pack transmitter and face-worn MKE- 1 lavaliers on the talent linking to EM9046 receivers at the mix position, plus analogue SK5212 transmitters/EM3732 receivers and SKM lavaliers on opposite cheeks serving as back-ups.” A
The technological hub of the event
“Based on experiences of silent discos and museum tours that use wireless headphones, I began to think of the artistic possibilities for such a system” Martin Gimenez, lead sound designer
for the audience, plus additional monitor headphone and IEM mixes – one for the 11-piece orchestra, one for the conductor and another for the wandering performers and dancers. “Because of the complexity
The atmospheric performance is captured here in a rehearsal
instead they listened through high-tech wireless headphones.” “Based on experiences of silent discos and museum tours that use wireless headphones, I began to think of the artistic possibilities
for such a system,” states Martin Gimenez, the opera’s lead sound designer. “The audience could roam freely through the station, pursuing individual characters or creating their own story in the
of the production, I used the SD11’s snapshot automation to handle changing EQ and dynamics setups for different scenes,” Tipp says, “in addition to panning, reverb sends, monitor mixes and even reverb-engine patches.” “The SD11 is an amazing console,” Gimenez enthuses, “with enhanced versatility and user flexibility – and it sounded great!” To provide extended RF
coverage and reception over nearly an acre of public areas, Bexel/ASG handled frequency coordination under the direction of business segment manager
Sennheiser 2000 Series IEM system handled foldback for singers and dancers, using four SR2050 single-channel transmitters and 18 EK2000 receivers with IE4 in-ear units. Audience members wore Sennheiser RS120 wireless headphones. “Their comfortable open-ear design with easy on/off button made them a perfect choice for this application,” the sound designer concludes. “While our system allowed for an unlimited number of receivers, to ensure a manageable flow through the train station we limited the audience number to 200. For the headphone conceit, we created the entire aural environment from the ground up, so I knew what went to all the headphones would sound exactly the same.”
invisiblecitiesopera.com
www.psneurope.com
metre of cabling required (despite wireless nature of performance)
Photo: Dana Ross
Photo: Bexel/ASG
Photo: Bexel/ASG
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