Recording "Powder Her Face"

This Opera was played in an old warehouse because La Monnaie is closing for renovation work on the stage.  The stage was very deep and at floor level, the public was sitting on something that looked very much as the tribune of a big sports venue.  The small orchestra was sitting behind the public.  Because of it's placement it needed some sound reinforcement, for the singers and the audience.  All Instruments had close microphones and a big line array was setup in front of the stage.  The singers were surprisingly well audible at the audience's place  but the set was (intentional?) well build to project the sound from the back to the front.

In addition to the close microphones, we added 2 couples of omnidirectional microphones, one above the conductor's head and another one on front of the wind-section. (saxomophone and brass)  This is one of the rare occasions where we can benefit of a real stereo array installed at a good sounding position.  Whenever the orchestra is playing in the pit and the singers are on stage, we cannot hang a main microphone pair because it is to visible and would also create shadows in the stage.  But how 'easy' the mix job becomes when you have this pair installed.  The sound of the orchestra is much more natural end you can create a lot of depht to it.

The singers all had wireless microphones and we had a backup with 7 boundary microphones on stage.  This style of music sounds good with the voices a bit closer and dryer so in the mix we mainly used this ones.

3 channels, 1 setup

The Opera was live on the Opera Platform and recorded simultaneously by the Flemish radio. The setup for this was rather easy because the Flemish radio did a live mix for the streaming platform and their radio transmission and we recorded the same MADI stream on multitrack for post production for our own streaming.