"When this project was brought to Philip Ashley [sound manager at ENO] we were asked if it was possible to achieve," says Chris Coxhead - project sound designer for ENO. "We had one fairly major problem to solve and that was that we would only have 10 minutes to sound check the singers and orchestra, which is a very limited amount of time, specially for something that size and that exposed. But Philip and I thought about it and decided that as long as we kept it simple it should be OK. I asked Paul Stannering, the front-of-house engineer, what he wanted and he said a D5. I wanted digital to be able to reproduce everything quickly, and the ENO staff is familiar with console as we have a D5T installed at the London Coliseum, so as soon as Paul said he wanted one Philip was very happy." He continues: "In the end, it was decided that we would have a rehearsal, but at the BBC's Maida Vale studios. At that point it was absolutely essential to have a digital console to make sure that what we had on site was exactly the same as at rehearsal."
"Using the line array on site, we knew we should be able to get enough level off a Calrec Soundfield mic, which meant that Paul would have a good general mix to start with. But we also knew that we'd have to supplement this with some mics on vocals basses, cellos, etc. Paul Cunnliffe from the BBC wanted to do fairly open mic-ing [there were about 40 mics in the end] and all mics had to go to all consoles, whether FOH or in tucks for broadcast.
"Things took five or 10 minutes to settle down at the beginning of the performance because of wind, but after that it was great. We really wanted to maintain the dynamic of the orchestra and we achieved that."
SSE's Chris Beale comments: "We'd been toying with the idea of buying a DiGiCo system for some time," "We were sitting on the fence a little because of the selection of consoles available, but then we found an opportunity for a relatively long rental and decided to bite the bullet and DiGiCo has a good, market-leading product. We're really pleased we could offer the D5 FMX system to the ENO. Everyone was very pleased with the way it performed."
(Lee Baldock)
