Coordinated by Ibsen 2006 in cooperation with the Egyptian Tourism Authority and the Eqyptian Ministry of Culture, the event featured a large cast plus the Cairo Symphony Orchestra, the Cairo Opera Acapella Choir and singers from The Norwegian National Opera.
For the two 3000-capacity performances, the show's live audio designer Per Ola Holden brought in three DiGiCo consoles to ensure that the complex mixing requirements would be as easy as possible to handle. "I did three research trips down to Egypt, in February, in March and in April," says Per Ola, of DiGiCo's Norwegian distributor AVAB-CAC A/S. "In the beginning we discussed using local companies to supply everything, but there are currently no digital consoles in Egypt. It would have meant having five 40-channel analogue consoles at FOH, another two at monitors and at least one extra sound technician.
"We decided to bring in our own consoles from Norway, as DiGiCo are the only consoles that can handle so many inputs, yet be so easy to use. The time we had available was very tight too, so the ability to programme the consoles offline was a key factor."
Cairo-based Acoustic Audio was used to supply racks and stacks, which comprised a JBL Vertec VT4888 rig, flown nine per side with six front-fills and four Electro-Voice subs per side. Monitors were 12 Turbosound TFM-230 wedges, 20 E-V ZX-1s for the orchestra and eight JBL EONs for the choir.
AVAB-CAC deployed a DiGiCo D1 and D5 at front-of-house, with a further D1 on monitors. The DiGiCo consoled arrived on 12 October, with the first rehearsal scheduled for the next day. The sound team had a scare, thanks to the equipment receiving some extremely rough handling en-route. "The cases were almost falling apart," says Per Ola. "One of the MADI racks had been crushed so hard that the rack strips/rails had only the rackmounts attached to it, while the MADI box was sitting loose at the bottom of the rack. Yet the DiGiCo equipment performed perfectly during the entire rehearsal and show period!"
Rehearsal time was tight, as they couldn't start before 11.30pm each day, thanks to the thrice-nightly 'sound and light show' which takes place at Giza. Anything that disrupted sight lines to the Sphinx and the Pyramids had to be lowered the morning after each rehearsal then, after the last 'sound and light show' each evening, the crew only had an hour to hoist the lights and PA stage left, build up the back side of the main stage and put up all music stands for the orchestra.
The D1 at FOH was used to submix the orchestra and the choir, the orchestra alone using 104 microphones. These were patched to two onstage MADI racks and to the D1 via coax cables. The microphones were submixed into eight stereo groups, returned to the same MADI racks and sent to a transformer splitter at stage right. In addition, the D1 also received four stereo subgroups of the choir's 32 microphones.
The nine pairs of stereo mixes were then fed to the D5, which was the show's main console. The D5 also handled 24 wireless mic feeds from the actors, four wired backing vocal mics, harp, keyboards, a local mini MADI rack to handle local talkback, a four input Lexicon 480L digital effects system and outputs for the show's live television broadcast and DVD recording.
"I used all six effect engines in the D5, plus the Lexicon 480L for the orchestra," says Per Ola. "As well as the expected outputs, I also sent a mono group to the D1 on monitors containing a mix of the actors wireless systems which made it easier for monitor engineer Jarle Kvalsund to deliver a time right speech mix to the different systems."
As well as all the inputs
