Amplification in Opera

Any thoughts on the impact?

I've read that quite a few opera houses now have speakers set up but it's almost exclusively for the purpose of fixing bad acoustics. Then I read a review of Doctor Atomic and found out that Adams had pretty much everything mic'd and amplified in that opera. I haven't been able to find any information on how this affected the experience though.

Personally, I'm leaning towards amplification being a really good idea. I once went to the Met and sat in the highest level for a performance of La Boheme and, while still enjoyable, it was like listening to the music that someone else is playing in their room down the hall. Everything felt so distant. I can't afford to spend $300 on opera tickets to find out how great it sounds when you're a quarter of that distance from the stage and that strikes me as a very bad thing.

One of the problems with opera, and classical music as a whole, is that the audience is dwindling. There's not much to attract younger people unless they just happen to be particularly curious types. But, if one of those less patient types does decide to check out opera for the first time and goes to a performance they're likely to buy those $50 tickets much sooner than the $450 tickets. This person is likely going to be bored out of their mind if they're used to going to concerts where you have to scream to be heard by the person next to you.

Of course, you have the fear that composers and performers will get lazy and that the audio engineers will take control out of the hands of the conductor. Those seem like only possibilities though. You may end up with these problems but you just as easily may not.

All of this doesn't even get into the possibilities that amplification brings with it. For instance, dynamics. If you have mixers who know nothing about classical music you may end up with compressors thrown on everything until it's squeezed into a 3db range but if compressors are avoided you can maintain the normal dynamics. Along with that you can get much quieter and still be effective. Singers can worry about making things sound nice instead of balancing between that and making sure that someone a mile away can still hear what they're saying and so on.

I'm starting to ramble I think. Obviously I have good feelings about amplification in the opera house but I'm still open to the opposing view. It just seems like it would be so good for bringing in a larger audience. You wouldn't have to be well off to be able to go to an opera and have a dazzling experience. You wouldn't have to lean over the seat in front of you to hear someone speaking or stare at the translation screen. I read once that Sondheim is all sorts of nostalgic for the time when you went to a musical and had to really struggle to hear everything and how he thinks it's bad that listeners don't have to work so much anymore. I have to say, I don't understand why someone should have to do any work when they're going somewhere to be entertained.

Anyway, like I said, any thoughts?

I have nothing at all against it, in principle. In the end, the result counts, not how it was achieved. If electronic assistance is needed, fine, use it.

I think however, that it should be very consciously applied. Just making certain singers/instruments loud can have weird effects if it's done without consideration. For example the heard volume of a singer just might not fit to the kind of sound she or he is producing anymore, making it sound highly unnatural and reducing the identification between the singer and his heard voice. (I.e. singing loudly isn't just louder than singing quietly, it also gives a different tone. And if you just make something that is sung quietly too loud, it will immediately give an "amplification impression" which can be distracting.) The other problem is spatial positioning of the amplified sound. Since the majority of the sound is not coming from the actual position of the singer anymore, but from speakers, there is a loss of spatial information and all voices are brought together to a single place, taking away some of the room experience of the opera stage and making it more flat. Clever positioning of the speakers and being careful of how much of which signal you send to which speaker (or even more advanced stereo/surround-techniques) can help with that.

In most cases, all of these things are not a problem when the amplification isn't too strong, i.e. if the real sound still can be heard and it's not -only- coming from the speakers.

I've composed for a project with Guitar, Viola and Live-Electronics recently, where we had to use amplification. It was crucial to find just the right volume of amplification, to make it loud enough to be heard enough for the whole audience, but not make it sound too detached from the stage and the actual musicians. I think that is one of the crucial points: As soon as the amplification becomes so strong that you're no longer hearing the music as a direct result from the music on stage, but just as "loudspeaker music with people moving around on the stage" you probably should use less amplification, since at this point you might just as well record the musicians/singers and not use them live at all, which would be a lot cheaper. If you -do- use live musicians, don't make them appear totally obsolete.

But of course, one basic thing should also be: Build opera houses with good acoustics!

Originally Posted by Gardener

But of course, one basic thing should also be: Build opera houses with good acoustics!

Of course, but even with the best acoustics you're going to be straining to hear over even whispers in the audience when you're in the cheap seating. I guess you could also just make the opera houses much smaller than venues like the Met but then you would have a harder time bringing in enough money to keep the place running which is already a problem. Building new opera houses is also much more expensive than adding a sound system.

I think a lot of the amplification issues would be easily solved by only placing speakers near the stage. The position of the singers could also be maintained by placing microphones on the stage and panning them instead of on the singers themselves.

Of course. Good acoustics don't solve every problem and as I said, I find using amplification very adequate in many situations. I just meant that acoustics alone can make a huge difference and shouldn't be neglected. Bayreuth simply allows other ways of performing operas than other opera houses, for instance. Even with good amplification something can be incomprehensible if the room acoustics don't work. Not even to mention how it influences the way the performers feel and thus the quality of their performance.

But obviously it's also a financial question. It's clear that you can't just build an opera house to suit your needs everytime you feel like it.

Originally Posted by Gardener

Of course. Good acoustics don't solve every problem and as I said, I find using amplification very adequate in many situations. I just meant that acoustics alone can make a huge difference and shouldn't be neglected. Bayreuth simply allows other ways of performing operas than other opera houses, for instance. Even with good amplification something can be incomprehensible if the room acoustics don't work. Not even to mention how it influences the way the performers feel and thus the quality of their performance.

But obviously it's also a financial question. It's clear that you can't just build an opera house to suit your needs everytime you feel like it.

I've heard that Bayreuth is set up so that every seat is a good seat. You're definitely right about acoustics.

The composers didn't have "Soprano Solo with microphone" written on the score. If the hall needs aplification, it's time to pull out the wrecking ball and build a hall that sounds good. I've been the the absolute last row of the very top teir of the Met and I can still hear everything! It's amazing! Probably several hundred yards from the orchestra can I can hear the quiet oboe solo. That is what it should be like!

Originally Posted by Gardener

But obviously it's also a financial question. It's clear that you can't just build an opera house to suit your needs everytime you feel like it.

Why not? The Met seems to do it just fine. So does the Philharmonic. It seems like a lot of these major organizations spend millions of tax dollars and patronage monies on these sorts of things.

Now if you're the Dubuque Opera Company, well that's a different story.

Originally Posted by Justin Tokke

The composers didn't have "Soprano Solo with microphone" written on the score. If the hall needs aplification, it's time to pull out the wrecking ball and build a hall that sounds good. I've been the the absolute last row of the very top teir of the Met and I can still hear everything! It's amazing! Probably several hundred yards from the orchestra can I can hear the quiet oboe solo. That is what it should be like!

Of course you can hear it, as long as no one is whispering. My problem isn't that it's completely inaudible from that distance, it's that it doesn't carry a big impact. If you try to introduce someone to opera who has only ever been to pop concerts and their first experience is some quiet music (a lot of which isn't supposed to be quiet) that's a hundred yards away they're going to lose interest quick.

I wasn't aware that the Met rebuilt their house all the time either. I was under the impression that they're hurting for money judging by the amount they bug me for donations. In the 3 months after since attending a performance I've gotten 2 letters looking for donations and 3 phone calls for the same. They even told me that their ticket sales covers only a portion of their costs.

Originally Posted by JoshMc

One of the problems with opera, and classical music as a whole, is that the audience is dwindling. There's not much to attract younger people unless they just happen to be particularly curious types. But, if one of those less patient types does decide to check out opera for the first time and goes to a performance they're likely to buy those $50 tickets much sooner than the $450 tickets. This person is likely going to be bored out of their mind if they're used to going to concerts where you have to scream to be heard by the person next to you.

I'm not sure I follow this reasoning. The whole notion that "them youngsters listen to amplified music, so if we amplify opera they might like it" seems to me quite misguided. It's attaching too much weight to a very superficial characteristic.

That aside, it must be realized that satisfactorily amplifying an opera is not easy. It requires considerable skill from the engineers, and done less than decently it can be disastrous. I would rather listen to an unamplified opera in a good hall that's on the quiet side, than a badly amplified one. You have to remember that in the various types of music where amplification is common, the music itself evolved and developed with amplification in mind, and is tailored to suit it, just like opera is tailored to suit a situation where everything needs to be loud enough to be heard directly. Different approaches are needed for both to function truly well, and when taking one already developed medium, and tacking onto it a foreign means of expression, great care must be exercised if the result is to give the impression of a developed artistic concept, rather than a makeshift compromise.

Originally Posted by EldKatt

I'm not sure I follow this reasoning. The whole notion that "them youngsters listen to amplified music, so if we amplify opera they might like it" seems to me quite misguided. It's attaching too much weight to a very superficial characteristic.

That aside, it must be realized that satisfactorily amplifying an opera is not easy. It requires considerable skill from the engineers, and done less than decently it can be disastrous. I would rather listen to an unamplified opera in a good hall that's on the quiet side, than a badly amplified one. You have to remember that in the various types of music where amplification is common, the music itself evolved and developed with amplification in mind, and is tailored to suit it, just like opera is tailored to suit a situation where everything needs to be loud enough to be heard directly. Different approaches are needed for both to function truly well, and when taking one already developed medium, and tacking onto it a foreign means of expression, great care must be exercised if the result is to give the impression of a developed artistic concept, rather than a makeshift compromise.

I wouldn't consider it a superficial characteristic. If that were true then why would so many opera-goers rally against the idea and why would people claim that it completely changed the face of musicals? Sure, it's not as important as the actual music but it does affect how the music is written and it certainly affects the experience. My point about new listeners is that it's just one more thing to kill their interest, not the only thing.

I would argue that other amplified music has not developed with amplification. Rock music from the 50s onward and any music that didn't exist before then you can say that for but that leaves out plenty of genres that use amplification. Jazz, musicals, folk music all use amplification regularly now and didn't start with it. It has changed the way they developed since it started being used but they didn't start with sound systems in mind. Saying opera shouldn't use amplification because it wasn't written with amplification in mind in the past is self-defeating. Nothing would ever change if we thought that way.

Honestly, I'd like it if we could rewind 150 years and still have all the advantages that opera had before amplification and recording technology but, since we can't, it seems foolish to not take advantage of the tools at our disposal today.