The 2,723-seat venue was designed by Canadian-Uruguayan architect Carlos Ott and opened on 13 July 1989, the day before the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. Updating technical equipment is a continual process at big venues and the Bastille Opera is no exception.
ATEÏS finished work on the building-wide paging and stage monitoring system at the end of 2010 and is now upgrading the public address installation. Unusually ATEÏS France installed the paging and monitoring equipment itself, rather than just supplying products to a systems integrator. "On this project products didn't exist," explains Jerome Beyls, commercial director of ATEÏS France. "So the best way was to deal directly with the Opera so that new products could be developed to match what they needed."
The new paging system covers 14 stages, 233 dressing rooms and 13 kilometres of corridors. The core of the installation is ATEÏS ' Vox@Net PA distribution server and controller. Based on IP (internet protocol) technology, this is the backbone of the monitoring and show call system.
Each dressing room has a monitor loudspeaker and a touch screen for selecting to which stage someone wants to listen. The loudspeakers receive messages from the stage manager made on one of 23 stage call stations positioned around the Opera.
Relays of the live performances are processed and distributed through ATEÏS new UAPg2 DSP audio matrix, which is connected to two mics hanging over the stage. Beyls says the original intention was to use an older generation product, the ES22T, but as the UAPg2 developed it was considered better suited to the job at the Opera.
(Jim Evans)
