Among the performers this year were the Italian Navy, James Taylor, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Venice La Fenice, and the well-know Italian singer Biagio Antonacci.
But the highlight of this year's event was the appearance of Sting on 29 July in Piazza San Marco. This was just one date of his worldwide Symphonicity Tour which has seen Sting and his band accompanied by the 50-piece Philharmonic Orchestra La Fenice.
The festival organiser's intention was to highlight as much as possible the stunning architectural values of San Marco square, and this meant that the stage had to appear less invasive than the previous year. Consequently the sound system was also required to create a lesser visual impact, and to be constructed without the dominant PA tower structures that are typically placed on the sides of the stage.
Indeed, many were the challenges that needed to be solved in a concert venue that already has perhaps the largest number of restrictions in the world. There were several specific requirements in the planning phase: the main speaker hangs had to be spaced quite far apart for scenic and photographic requirements; no obtrusive scaffolding PA towers were permitted; no flown subwoofers; no bass frequencies on the stage (which would have been a big problem for the orchestra and its conductor); and a requirement for a maximum sound pressure level of 89dB on the Basilica of San Marco, and a maximum SPL of 91dB at the fronts of all the buildings around the square.
In addition, due to the ever-present risk of flooding all the equipment had to be raised at least 30cm from the ground. As it happened there was a small flood during the Sting concert, luckily only 4 to 5cm in depth, which necessitated about 50 people in the audience having to temporarily lift their feet. But Venetians are used to that.
Transportation also presented huge difficulties. All the equipment was brought in on canal boats and then moved on to the square on small electric trolleys, because in traffic-free Venice it is impossible to get trucks anywhere near San Marco, far less the stage.
All in all no easy task for Hollywood Service's owner Nikita Renato Canè and the audio technical staff of FOH sound engineer Giulio Albamonte, stage sound engineer Francesco Penolazzi, systems engineer Luca Stefani, and assistant systems engineer Federico Maule.
"Easy processing and equalization were the prerogatives of this audio system," explains Luca Stefani, who designed, implemented and tuned the audio system. "We had to combine the restrictions of the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage with the organiser's needs and the many requirements dictated by the different hosted productions - of which, last but not least, was the Sting production.
"Our starting point was accurate sizing and aiming through the use of EASE Focus 2 software. And then after that, we required an appropriate acoustic and electronic setup to meet the needs of all parties involved."
The main system was composed of 32 Flex Array loudspeakers on two single mast tower lifts, aimed to cover the whole audience area of the square from as close as 5m out to 80m distant. Because of the need to keep the level of low frequencies down, both on stage and in the surrounding area, and the need to produce a wavefront directed exclusively toward the public, the ground-stacked subwoofers were arranged in an end-fire configuration, made up of three rows per side.
Two delay towers of 16 Flex Array modules were introduced specifically to maintain tonal and level stability for the rear half of audience. Each delay was also composed of five TFA-600L 18" subwoofers in cardioid mode so to reduce as much as possible
