Outdoor opera immersed in L-Acoustics L-ISA
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Then, for one weekend in September, Blue, a contemporary American opera by Jeanine Tesori and Tazewell Thompson, was staged at the city's open-air Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre, a mostly pop-music venue where recent shows included performances by Chaka Khan, Machine Gun Kelly, Erykah Badu, and UB40.
Awarded Best New Opera of 2020 by the Music Critics Association of North America, Blue is about a young Black couple raising a son in modern-day Harlem and their struggles with police brutality. With its all-black cast, the opera is a celebration, tragedy, and timely and highly relevant work.
While the Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre isn't often home to the opera genre, what helped tie it all together, creating an immersive and engaging environment for performers and patrons alike, was the production's implementation of L-Acoustics L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal Sound technology.
“When I was thinking about sound for this piece, I was thinking, how do we maintain the intimacy of the story and still convey the sweeping arc of big ideas? Like confronting God, the state, history, and violence,” says director Kaneza Schaal, who worked closely with Michigan Opera Theatre’s Gary L. Wasserman and artistic director Yuval Sharon.
“This piece was made to be performed in a traditional opera space, but here at the open-air Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre, it’s a very different proposition. So, it was essential to bring on collaborators who could help us represent both the intimacy and the sweeping grandness of this story. The collaboration with L-Acoustics is the backbone of what made this possible. What L-ISA technology did was allow us to have a more embodied experience between the stage and the audience.”
Sharon agrees: “Opera is typically performed in acoustically-optimized venues requiring no amplification, truly demonstrating the beauty and full range of the human voice, from barely a whisper to the loudest possible utterance,” he says. “To recreate that on a stage like the Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre was an enormous challenge because we wanted to make sure it didn't just feel like a rock and roll show, where everything is loud and forward. We still wanted our audience to experience nuance and subtlety, as well as to get a sense of the sound creating space.
“Having the sound travel and follow the singers was a crucial benefit of using L-ISA technology for Blue. With it, the ears of our audience members helped direct their eyes to where the singers were on stage, the very same way it would happen in an opera house. It was a subtle effect, but without it, there would be so much that was lost from the experience. L-ISA really helped ensure that the depth and full spectrum of what this piece is about was able to be best communicated to the audience.”
With Livonia-based Thunder Audio supplying most of the audio reinforcement gear, the full 17.1 surround sound configuration for Blue comprised seven arrays of eight L-Acoustics Kiva II each flown across the stage, plus 10 Syva enclosures as surrounds. These were complemented by seven X8 coaxials spread across the stage lip for front-fill, plus four KS21 subs for low-end impact. The system was designed and implemented using the L-Acoustics L-ISA Processor and controlled on the show’s DiGiCo SD10 FOH console via a DeskLink connection.
The arrays themselves were positioned using L-Acoustics Soundvision predictive software to set the acoustical stage and avoid intelligibility-damaging reflections. “One of the big challenges was working in a covered outdoor arena versus a more controlled environment like an opera house,” explains L-Acoustics applications engineer Jordan Tani, who collaborated with both Carlos Mosquera and Marcus Ross, also of L-Acoustics, on the system design, setup, and operation.
“There are a lot of reflections in this venue, and Soundvision can accurately predict what's going to happen in the space. We were able to establish the acoustics geometry for the audience perspective and to make sure that we had the proper coverage for the entire venue,” Tani concludes.
