In post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, you never know what to expect; events often take unexpected turns. Case in point: "A Night for New Orleans." It began as a modest fundraising gala, something to help the city's renowned opera company regain a semblance of normalcy. However, by the time the day of the event rolled around, it had mushroomed into what was quite likely the largest operatic performance in Louisiana history. When Placido Domingo stepped on stage at the New Orleans Arena–a relatively new NBA-sized facility largely unscathed in the disaster–an audience of 7,400-plus gave him a rousing welcome. By any measure, it was a result far better than expected only weeks earlier. However, for the audio professionals charged with sound reinforcement, the late surge in ticket sales became a challenging turn of events that required on-thespot changes in system configuration. "When we left California, we were expecting to cover the floor and the lower bowl only," said Ian Dubois of Pro Media/ UltraSound. "But when we landed in New Orleans, the opera's production manager, Jerry Sherk, told us that they had sold the floor, sold out the lower bowl and were now overflowing into the upper arena. That came as a surprise."
The story of how a modest fundraiser morphed into an arena-sized spectacular stands as one of the more encouraging tales to emerge from this struggling city. It began last summer, when the New Orleans Opera was planning its 2005-2006 season. Two full productions were scheduled for the fall, two for the spring and a fifth gala concert was set for February. Then came Katrina. Both fall performances were cancelled, and, with the orchestra still widely dispersed in December, the gala was bumped into March.
In the meantime, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had determined that the opera's home venue, the Mahalia Jackson Performing Arts Center, would not be ready to reopen in time for the show, due to too much mold. At first, it was proposed to move the event to the venerable 1920s-era Civic Auditorium. It seemed a safe bet, as the auditorium hosts the Mardi Gras balls, which were set for the week prior to the gala. But building inspectors nixed that moldy oldie as well.
The only remaining venue large enough to accommodate them was the New Orleans Arena, which was much bigger, having nearly 15,000 seats more than either the Jackson PAC or the auditorium. It was big enough, it was available and it was open.
In parallel with venue hopscotching, the opera's management was busy lining up guest soloists. Topping the invitation list was Domingo, who received an early career boost from a New Orleans appearance some 44 years ago. Domingo graciously consented to headline the evening, alongside a gallery of other notables including Frederica von Stade, Denyce Graves, Richard Leech and conductor Robert Lyall.
In the meantime, seeking sound advice on large venue reinforcement, production manager Jerry Sherk called on longtime compatriot Roger Gans, resident sound designer for the San Francisco Opera, with whom Sherk had worked during his 21 years with that company. Gans was tied down by prior commitments in Japan, but was fully confident in turning over the job to David Bowers of Pro Media/UltraSound, headquartered in Hercules, Calif. Gans also suggested Sherk contact Meyer Sound directly, as the company had been supportive of the arts in the past, and of opera in particular.
Bowers and Pro Media/UltraSound were ideally suited to the task: Both had been principals on Luciano Pavarotti tours as far back as the 1980s. Bowers signed on as the audio coordinator and FOH balance engineer, enlisting his colleague Ian Dubois as systems engineer.
Along with the skills of Bowers and Dubois, Pro Media/UltraSound provided the extensive high-end microphone complement required for the soloists, 72-piece orchestra and 79-voice chorus. To supply the rest of the equipment, Sherk was referred to Muse Productions (Birmingham, Ala.), which was then contracted to fill the remaining equipment needs, as well as supply a crew to put it in place. Back in Berkeley, Meyer Sound executive vice president Helen Meyer agreed to lend support to the effort.
Dubois, who bore responsibility for plotting system coverage and tuning, was not concerned about having enough firepower: The 24 Meyer Sound MILO boxes and two wider-coverage MILO 120s already on hand offered ample SPL. The trick was maintaining uniform coverage from the down-front VIP tables (tagged at $10,000 each) up to the $10 student seats in the upper tiers.
"We couldn't get more MILOs on short notice," recalled Dubois, "so we reconfigured the entire array on arrival. I took out the spreader bar and tucked up the MILO 120s, then raised the arrays to extend the coverage. That left sound a little weak in the front, but Robert Hawthorne of Muse Productions–with help from the Meyer Sound area sales manager, Rick Coleman –was able to find some M1Ds, which could throw further than the UPM-1Ps he'd brought for frontfill. The M1Ds easily threw past 30 feet, which got us into the field of the MILOs. Everybody was happy."
All the pieces were put in place, though–again–not precisely as planned. In addition to reconfiguring the MILO system, Dubois also modified the splay angles of the Meyer MSL-4 cabinets being used as sidefill for the upper tier of seats. The only part of the loudspeaker system left as planned was the subwoofer complement of eight cardioid-pattern M3D-Subs.
Two days prior to the event, the California and Alabama contingents converged on New Orleans. Fortunately, nothing of substance had changed on stage, so Bowers was able to implement his microphone placement plan largely unaltered. The six frontline vocal mics were Schoeps Colettes with MK IV capsules and CMC6 Ug preamplifiers. Orchestra mics were a diverse mixture of models from Neumann, Schoeps, DPA and AKG, plus a few Schertler pickups for harp and basses. The primary mixing console was a 56-input Midas Heritage 3000, with a 56-input Midas Siena connected as a sidecar. The four Meyer PSM-2 monitor wedges were mixed from Front of House, and used for voices only. ("I'll only put orchestra in the monitors if you put a gun to my head," said Bowers.) Insertion of outboard gear was minimal, aside from slight compression on the vocal groups from a pair of Avalon VT-737s and enough judicious reverb (Lexicon PCM-70 on voices and PCM-80 on orchestra) to lend an opera house ambience.
When the lights went down for the performance, the entire arena became almost eerily quiet, recalled Bowers. "There was a celebratory feel, but people were quiet, and very attentive. I've never heard that many people in an arena be that quiet."
By all accounts, "A Night for New Orleans" was a stunning financial and artistic success. As is the norm for any reinforced classical event, no news is regarded as good news. "We had no complaints at all," reported Bowers. "Not one person came up to us at the interval. That's a very good measure of how well the system is doing."
The sound of the show even drew a compliment from Bruce Eggler, arts reviewer for The New Orleans Times-Picayune, who duly noted that "the sound system worked smoothly and without evident distortion."
According to Sherk, this amounted to fulsome praise, as Eggler is known as a purist with a distaste for amplified classical music of any kind. "It was a bigger compliment than he meant to pay," added Sherk. "Also, I'm the person who usually gets sound-related complaints on events like this, and in this case, I have not heard one negative comment."
