Built by the architects Sn°hetta in a waterside location in the Bj°rvika district, this great theatre represents the beginning of a remarkable urban renewal which will transform the city of Oslo. This remarkable building houses a traditional horseshoe-shaped auditorium built around a proscenium stage, accommodating 1400 in its main hall, and another 400 in a secondary performance space. The house is the seat of the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, known in Scandinavia for its leaning towards avant-garde and experimental productions, and the artistic programme is also expected to include musical shows alongside the opera repertoire.
Buying local technology, Den Norske Opera has become the first international opera house to install the Stagetracker FX actor tracking and audio positioning system developed by fellow Norwegians TTA. The system was purchased from Scandinavian distributor Benum entirely on word-of-mouth recommendation.
"In 2006, the technical team at the Opera House was impressed by reports about the Stagetracker technology in action at the Royal Albert Hall in London," explains Ronald Hernes of Benum, "and the system also comes with a strong recommendation from the influential Tr°ndelag Theatre in Trondheim."
The National Opera House has installed a Stagetracker 16FXR, with the capacity to handle 16 tagged performers simultaneously on the large stage, which has two RadioEye infra-red detectors installed in the truss. The sophisticated hardware and software enables the positions of performers on stage to be tracked in real time, applying an actor's position to his microphone signal so that his voice appears to follow him as he moves around the stage. TTA has also supplied its FX Audio Editor which provides control and arrangement functions for sound effect playback.
"We all feel that Stagetracker offers the next step in theatre," says Hernes. "It is the logical development now that the best houses have surround sound installations. The sound engineers at the Opera House are most excited about the TTA system. They see it as a piece of technology that will really help them to do their job better, allowing them to concentrate on their sound mix rather than audio positioning."
(Jim Evans)
