L-ISA for Moscow Musical Theatre
- Details
Just in time for the 2018/19 season, the Musical Theatre has made a new home for itself in the remodelled and refurbished Rossiya Theatre on Moscow's Pushkinskaya Square - one of the most frequented squares in the world. This new venue has an opportunity for the sound department to push the creative potential of the theatre to a new level by installing the first permanent theatrical installation of L-Acoustics’ L-ISA technology.
The theatre’s repertoire ranges from a rock opera production of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment to a fusion of circus performance with operetta and musical genres in The Circus Princess, and a re-telling of Cinderella.
The new sound installation will enable the sound department to take advantage of object-based, multi-dimensional mixing, with realistic and distinct localisation of audio objects, driven natively from its DiGiCo SD10 console using Desk Link L-ISA integration.
Head of sound Maria Lenarskaya sees this new chapter as a natural evolution of the sound department's culture of innovation: "Our theatre is growing rapidly. New productions appear regularly, and every year we always try to do something new, to step forward somehow."
The challenge of specifying the PA system for the new venue was given to Stage Audio, a long-standing partner of the theatre. Along with the client's creative requirements, maximum audience coverage and an accurate sound-stage were the priorities. According to Stage Audio, once those needs had been identified, L-ISA was the obvious solution and, together with L-Acoustics and its Russian distributor Sonoruss, designed and installed the new L-ISA configuration.
The Moscow Musical Theatre's new L-ISA installation comprises five hangs of nine Kiva II ultra-compact modular line source elements across the stage to create the main L-ISA Scene system. That is augmented by an Extension system to both sides of the Scene, consisting of two hangs of six Kiva II. Low frequencies are taken care of by two hangs of three SB18 subs flown either side of the central Kiva II hang. Importantly, all arrays are hung well above the stage, outside the audience's line-of-sight.
Two X12 multi-purpose coaxial enclosures stacked stage left and right provide out-fill, whilst eight ultra-compact 5XT evenly distributed across the stage lip handle front-fill. Amplification is via ten LA4X and two LA12X amplified controllers.
According to Stage Audio, the finished system out-performed original aims by a wide margin and exceeds all modern requirements for PA systems by delivering well-localized, high spatial resolution audio to an impressive 90 percent of the audience.
Andrey Akhromeev, general director and founder of Stage Audio and project leader for the Rossiya Theatre installation, notes: "The entire project, from system design to final tuning, was completed within a year and L-ISA now provides the theatre and its sound engineers with a completely new level of control over the sound.”
(Jim Evans)
