Founded in 1787 and originally an Opera House, the theatre converted to drama and musical theatre after a complete rebuild in the early 1960s. The recent refurbishment in the Year of Culture was undertaken by Theatre Technologies, a Ryazan-based sound and lighting company that has a long relationship with the theatre. They installed the new d&b audiotechnik sound system supplied by Russian pro audio specialists Aris Pro, under the guidance of Elena Shabalina, at the time their leading acoustician, who formulated the install design.
"The hall is not as large as it appears in the photos; 20 metres from front stage to the rear of stalls," explained Shabalina. "The room is quite dry, 1.1 seconds, so it's fine for speech. The only real acoustical problem is some shading from the balcony, but this was easily overcome with the correct placement of loudspeakers. For me this is one of the great advantages of the d&b product range, all their loudspeakers sound very musical, very similar; and there is a loudspeaker cabinet to suit every coverage pattern. The propagation of sound is always extremely predictable."
The project was funded from local government, and an enlightened local bureaucracy they proved to be, as Shabalina was delighted to report. "Not unnaturally most local government administrators don't have the technical skills to specify such a project; I'm sure it's the same across the whole of Europe. But in Ryazan they do have a very good relationship with the theatre management and trusted them absolutely to manage the whole project."
The system design includes d&b Ci60s for balcony coverage, Ci90s at stalls level, both rigged around the proscenium arch, with Ci-SUBs set below the stage thrust. "The system is more than sufficient for musicals, but a design is already in place to rearrange placement and augment the system further, mainly adding d&b Qi loudspeakers, to allow for a more sophisticated PA. The ultimate goal is for a surround system, with the ability to shift the sound image using loudspeakers positioned around the stage," said Shabalina.
Grechko says: "With this new system we discovered that we really had no sound in the theatre at all before. The d&b loudspeakers have a splendid dynamic and frequency range, and sound beautiful for all kinds of music."
(Lee Baldock)
