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ENO Chooses Digico from SSE for First Ever Glastonbury Performance
Glastonbury’s Pyramid stage may seem an unlikely setting for an hour-long excerpt of The Valkyrie from Wagner’s Ring, but the performance, conducted by ENO music director Paul Daniel, not only received rave reviews but also held the full attention of a completely rapt festival audience. SSE Hire’s new DiGiCo D5 FMX digital mixing system was chosen by the English National Opera for this landmark recital, which included the Ride of the Valkyries and culminated with Wotan’s gripping farewell to his ‘radiant child’, Brünnhilde.
“When this project was brought to Philip Ashley (sound manager at ENO) we were asked if it was possible to achieve,” said Chris Coxhead, project sound designer for ENO. “We had one fairly major problem to solve and that was that we would only have ten minutes to sound-check the singers and orchestra, which is a very limited amount of time, specially for something that size and that exposed. But Philip and I thought about it and decided that as long as we kept it simple it should be okay. I asked Paul Stannering, the front-of-house engineer, what he wanted and he said a D5. I wanted digital to be able to reproduce everything quickly, and the ENO staff is familiar with console as we have a D5T installed at the London Coliseum, so as soon as Paul said he wanted one Philip was very happy.”
SSE’s D5 Live FMX system proved the perfect solution. “Due to the time constraints, we wanted to have the same console on monitors as on front-of-house,” continued Coxhead. “In the end, it was decided that we would have a rehearsal, but at the BBC’s Maida Vale studios. At that point it was absolutely essential to have digital console to make sure that what we had on site was exactly the same as at rehearsal.
“Using the line array on site, we knew we should be able to get enough level off a Calrec Soundfield mic, which meant that Paul would have a good general mix to start with. But we also knew that we’d have to supplement this with some mics on vocals basses, cellos, etc. Paul Cunnliffe from the BBC wanted to do fairly open mic-ing (there were about 40 mics in the end) and all mics had to go to all consoles, whether FOH or in trucks for broadcast.
“Things took five or ten minutes to settle down at the beginning of the performance because of wind, but after that it was great. We really wanted to maintain the dynamic of the orchestra and we achieved that.”
“We’d been toying with the idea of buying a DiGiCo system for some time,” added SSE’s Chris Beale. “We were sitting on the fence a little because of the selection of consoles available, but then we found an opportunity for a relatively long rental and decided to bite the bullet and DiGiCo has a good, market-leading product. We’re really pleased we could offer the D5 FMX system to the ENO. Everyone was very pleased with the way it performed.”
In picture: Paul Stannering at the D5.
20th July 2004
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