Amadeus and HOLOPHONIX Technologies Installed for the Threepenny Opera Directed by Thomas Ostermeier

The new Festival d'Aix-en-Provence production - The Threepenny Opera (B. Brecht and K. Weill, 1928) - staring Le Balcon orchestra and the troupe of the Comédie-Française directed by Thomas Ostermeier. A scientific opera merging sound spatialization and active acoustics...

The electro-acoustic setup is made up of nearly 60 speakers, facing, surrounding, enveloping, and sometimes overhanging the audience, to recreate virtual acoustic reflections as naturally as possible and to support the singers and musicians. 

The ‘main’ FOH system is composed of three ‘antennas’ (or arrays) of Amadeus loudspeakers. 

The first ‘antenna’ is made of eight (8) Amadeus C 12 R (1 x 12’’ LF; 1 x 1.75” MHF) coaxial speakers, flown above the front of the stage. These loudspeakers are evenly spaced across 15-meters with identical spacing between each speaker in the array.

The second ‘antenna’ is made of 14-point source transducers built into the front of the stage. These 14 loudspeakers, variants of the Amadeus PMX 5 model, form a large-scale ‘sound ramp’. They are evenly distributed across 14-meters, with 1-meter between each adjacent speaker. This speaker setup has been specifically designed for the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence. 

Each ‘module’ is based on 2-point source speakers, inherited from the Amadeus PMX 5 (1 x 5.25’’ LF; 1 x 1.75’’ HF) reference, for a total of 14 transducers. The front panel is angled at 13° matching the bleacher’s curvature of the audience seating, allowing an acoustical center of each speaker aiming the last row of seats.

Fixed in front of the proscenium, this large-scale front-fill system with limited depth offers three main functions...