Six hundred and fifty guests were present in Hangar-7, and they were able to move freely around the scenery and become part of the performance. To enable the audience to follow the opera - the orchestra was located in the opposite Hangar-8 - they were issued with compact MP3 players that received the opera audio signals via UHF transmission. The occasional noise from planes landing at the airport was integrated into the event. The images from several outside cameras portrayed the special scenario for the TV viewers. Appropriately, the escape from the Seraglio took place in a helicopter, in keeping with the extraordinary setting.
ServusTV broadcast the two-and-a-half-hour performance, which was recorded using 16 cameras, two steadicams and a cable cam system, both terrestrially and via satellite. The event was also streamed live on the internet. In addition, public screenings were held in Salzburg, Linz and Vienna, and viewers were also able to follow this modern production of Mozart's work in 19 countries via UnitelClassica.
Audio was provided by German production company TVN Mobile Production GmbH as the cooperation partner of Euro TV Production GmbH. "Our team, which was made up of Austrian and German audio experts, responded to all the challenges of this exceptional production," explained Stephan Thyssen, who has worked for TVN since 1998 and has headed the company's audio department since 2004. "You have to remember that many of those involved as well as the performers are used to working in an opera house with an infrastructure that has developed over many years. So our job was to fulfil all the requirements even under the special conditions in a hangar."
TVN Mobile Production was present on the grounds near the airfield with an outside broadcast van and an equipment truck. The audio from the OB van was mixed separately in a specially equipped audio container in which tonmeister and sound engineer Georg Burdicek (Tonzauber, Vienna) operated a digital mixing console and monitored the sound via five Neumann KH 310 A loudspeakers. In the control room of the OB van, a TVN staff member picked up the surround-sound signals supplied from the audio container, added the commentary as well as signals from atmosphere microphones and used them to generate various feeds for the broadcast sound.
The performance took place under technically challenging conditions over a total area of 13,700sq.m. The Camerata Salzburg conducted by Hans Graf played live in Hangar-8, while most of the vocalists performed in Hangar-7 on the opposite side. Both the orchestra and the vocalists were so far apart that they could neither see nor hear each other without electronic support.
All of the spot microphones in the orchestra were Sennheiser MKH 8040 cardioid mics mounted on special signal-carrying bars and fitted with MZW 8000 double-layer windshields. "This wind noise protection is extremely effective," said Georg Burdicek, who chose a Decca Tree for the main microphone set-up and provided the surround mix in a 5.0 format. Two Sennheiser MKH 800s were mounted on the rig in front of the orchestra as room microphones, while a cardioid Neumann TLM 170 R was used to mike the trumpets.
The conductor and the concert master followed the event acoustically via in-ear headphones which received their signals from a Sennheiser IEM system. The vocalists in Hangar-7 around 150m a
