latest news headlines
DPA Ensures Top Vocal Performances on Dutch Mamma Mia!
DPA 4060 miniature microphones are playing a large part in the ongoing success of the Dutch musical production of Mamma Mia! at the Beatrix Theater, Utrecht.
DPA’s Dutch distributor, TransTec, has an ongoing contract to supply Joop van den Ende Theaterproductions with DPA 4060s as vocal mics for the production, and has just supplied a further 30 following an initial order for 50 of the mics when the show opened in November 2003.
The show, which became an instant hit when it opened in Londonıs West End in 1999, has several simultaneous productions running around the world, from Korea to Las Vegas. The Dutch production has won three awards, including a Best Female Role in Larger Productions Award for Simone Kleinsma in the leading role of Donna, as well as having been voted best musical by the Dutch audiences. Chief engineer on the production, which is sold out throughout the summer, is Wibo Vermeulen.
Internationally-renowned theatrical sound designers Andrew Bruce and Bobby Aitken, responsible for the original show design and European transfers, specified the DPA 4060s in black and pink for the show to meet their aim of reproducing the original ABBA sound to the highest quality possible. Two of the 4060s, coupled with Hellermann Tyton sleeves, are being used by Kleinsma with Sennheiser SK50 transmitters.
"We do everything possible to accurately reproduce the original scores and sounds," says Martin Koch, musical supervisor at Littlestar, the worldwide production company for Mamma Mia! "It’s a very dynamic performance, the dialogue being almost acoustic with a little reinforcement, with peaks of around 104dB in the loudest parts. The castıs vocal characteristics have to be reproduced as naturally as possible, and the DPA 4060s are the best solution for this. The mics and cables must as invisible as possible, and the DPA miniatures also score very highly in this respect."
The 4060 cables have been coloured with flexible leather paint to match the cast’s hair, while any cables on bare skin are flesh-coloured.
The mics are fixed into the cast’s hair with wig clips – a joint effort by the makeup artists and sound crew – instead of being glued directly onto the skin. This avoids boundary effects and enhances the omnidirectional quality of the 4060s.
17th June 2004
HEADLINES
news archive
search stories
FOOTNOTE: Select the news type you require in the red band above; this will enable you to see the current news stories from that section
© 1999 - 2012 Entertainment Technology Press Limited News Stories
