Opera Recording Techniques

[fifthcircle]

Just started recording an opera company and I'm pretty happy with most of the work I've done so far. However, there is room for some improvement.

So I thought I'd start a thread on opera recording techniques. What have you tried that has worked well? What have you tried that has not? This includes microphones, placement (the big one here), etc... Especially taking into account the issues of sightlines, floor reflections, choral ensemble, etc...

My basic rig has been:

Orchestra: 4 DPA 4006 clamped to the top rail of the pit. The two on either side of the conductor had 50mm APE spheres. Occasional spots on a few color instruments (like harp)

Stage: 3 Schoeps cardiods in an L-C-R setup on the small Atlas desk stands. The stands I'm using are about 4-5" tall. The dig is fantastic on the stage, but the floor reflections can be a bit much. Also, my issue with the floor mics is for the big choral numbers, I loose some of the "choral" feel to the singers. Occasionally, an extra mic or two will be planted for performance that happens outside of the L-C-R rig. The good thing about this setup is great localization of sound from when the singers move about the stage.

I'm interested in hearing what others have done here.

--Ben

[tenor39]

Ben-

I've been doing this a bit differently. I find close miking the orchestra in the pit is usually mediocre at best, to awful at the worst, especially if the pit is concrete. Can you fly anything above the pit? I fly a pair of 4041's on a stereo bar from the eyebrow of the stage, focused into the pit. The orchestra sounds far more coherant and part of the whole performance this way, IMHO. I have also found that cardioids on small stands at the lip are usually an eyesore to the director (though YMMV) and it's hard to get them to sound good down that low. I've gone to using (3) 4061's in the Boundry Layer Mount on the floor of the stage, about 6" from the lip. They use the floor to your advantage and still manage to pick up the downstage singers quite well. With the omni's flying above the pit and stage, this combo has given me the best results so far. Do some time alignment in you DAW and you'll have great imaging with no comb filtering or phase issues. As with anything, your situation may work better with something else, so experiment. In the hall I'm in, what I use now works the best.

[fifthcircle]

Unfortunately, flying mics in this room is going to yield questionable results. The orchestra actually sounds pretty darned good micing it the way I have. I was actually quite plesantly surprised as I was not expecting it at all. It is a very deep pit and the orchestra is more than half under the lip of the stage. Basically all the winds and percussion are under the lip and a good portion of the strings are not. The edge of the pit wall results in mics that are about 8 feet above the players. Still a bit low, but definitely workable.

Flying mics over the pit is a problem because of the supertitles of translations. Means that the closest flown mics are no less than 25-30 feet over the performers. The person recording the group before me did this and the company was *very* unhappy with the results.

I've thought about dropping omnis (like DPA 4061s) over the stage, but with scenes flying in and out, there really isn't a place to hang them. Also, they have monitor speakers over the singers on pipes so that they can clearly hear the orchestra. It isn't a huge sound issue in the hall, but if mics are too close to them, it will very negatively affect the recording. The sight lines are another issue there once again. They don't want to see cables and the 4061 has only about 6 or 8 feet before the XLR. Mic cables and XLRs would definitely be seen.

The floor stands I use actually hide pretty well. I did have to remove the quik release pieces that I usually have, though, to get the mics lower. There is a row of foot lights on the stage that help hide the stands from the audience perspective.

The biggest issue (besides the ensemble aspects of the chorus) on the foot mics is the reflections from the floor. I had them partially taken care of through the use of some foam, but it still wasn't perfect.

--Ben

[tenor39]

Originally Posted by fifthcircle

Flying mics over the pit is a problem because of the supertitles of translations. Means that the closest flown mics are no less than 25-30 feet over the performers. The person recording the group before me did this and the company was *very* unhappy with the results.

I've thought about dropping omnis (like DPA 4061s) over the stage, but with scenes flying in and out, there really isn't a place to hang them. Also, they have monitor speakers over the singers on pipes so that they can clearly hear the orchestra. It isn't a huge sound issue in the hall, but if mics are too close to them, it will very negatively affect the recording. The sight lines are another issue there once again. They don't want to see cables and the 4061 has only about 6 or 8 feet before the XLR. Mic cables and XLRs would definitely be seen.
The biggest issue (besides the ensemble aspects of the chorus) on the foot mics is the reflections from the floor. I had them partially taken care of through the use of some foam, but it still wasn't perfect.

--Ben

I'm using the 4061's on the floor in the BLM's, not flying them, so there are no visible cables. I agree that flying from the electrics is usually fraught with peril. In my hall I'm able to fly a main pair over the pit and still stay out of the way of the supertitle screen. With the orchestra partly under the stage itself I think your solution is a good one. If you have a chance to borrow the 4061's w/BLM's, give them a try. I think you'll be amazed at the results. Not like a PZM at all.

[David Spearritt]

Hi Ben

We have had great results mic-ing the orchestra like you do, we had 4003's each side of the conductor, some MK21's inside on the rear strings and woods and some spots for harp etc.

We use an ORTF pair poking up over the lip for the downstage singers, and found that mid-rear stage singing was picked up nicely with two Neumann shotguns up in some lighting boxes near the front of the stage.

We cannot fly mics at all in our theatre due to interference with surtitles screen and other stage effects.

The orchestral sound is always a bit "close", but a bit of convolution reverb on those channels only fixes things. I think the improvements we could make would be the addition of boundary mics for the singing.

Finally, this is something that definitely needs multitracking, not so much for rebalancing but for getting essential post FX put on the separate mic sets.

Opera is very challenging, but because of this, probably my favourite of all recording projects I have done. Ultimately, very satisfying due to the larger than life ART going on.

[leddy]

Originally Posted by tenor39

I've gone to using (3) 4061's in the Boundry Layer Mount on the floor of the stage, about 6" from the lip.

Do you ever get footstep noises from the stage with this technique?

[tenor39]

Originally Posted by leddy

Do you ever get footstep noises from the stage with this technique?

No more so than with regular cardioids mounted on small stands at the stage lip. The miniatures are well isolated mechanically. I usually HPF the mic's at 80Hz anyway, so it becomes far less intrusive. This is the compromise involved in doing live events. When I used DPA compacts at the stage lip I had somewhat less foot noise, but a harder time capturing the singers when they were in between mic's.

[kstrauss]

Opera is particularly difficult because the mics cannot interfere with sightlines or get in the way of lighting and supertitles. It also depends very much on the theater, repertoire, voices, staging, and sets. We record 8 productions a year. All work is done by students, so we have tried to come up with a generic solution:

For the orchestra We use 4 crown PZM mics in the pit taped to the front wall, occasionally augmented with a spot mic or 2. The foot mics are three X-Y stereo pairs of Sure SM81s taped to the floor. Sounds wierd, I know but this config gives even coverage, eliminates reflections off the floor, and minimizes phasing as the singers move across the stage. When the show is using wagons and we need to point the mics up, we use wooden boxes on the front of the stage which elevate the mics about 6" and angles them upwards. Again they are taped to the box so there are no reflections. For the main pickup we use an A-B pair of DPA 4011s hung as low as possible pointed at the front of the stage. Depending on the show, we might use shotguns or cardiods in the light bridges to pick up upstage action, or mics hidden in the set to pick up dead spots. I have some pictures, so I ca post them if anyone's interested.

Since there is up 50' distance between the mics, we time align them before each performance. We slap 2 pieces of wood together from center stage and measure the delay. all mics are aligned to the main pair.

All mixing is done live, here's a link to a video stream of our production of La Boheme from 11/16 - you'll need Quicktime 7.2 and a broadband connection. To watch it in your web browser replace rtsp:// with http://

rtsp://streaming.music.indiana.edu/media/vaa6506_accessH264H.mov

This has a little compression, which we do only for the live video feed. If you stick it out you can see just about all of the problems encountered in live opera!

[Jim vanBergen]

A pair of upstage mics is always a huge help for me, both when prinsiple singers turn upstage and when I have a large chorus.

Sometimes I will add CARDIOID (perish the thought!) foot mics for vocals when I am not getting the right balance between orchestra and singers, though I 'd much rather capture the entire production with one set of microphones. Sadly, the buildings aren't all designed well for acoustics, not are all the performers quite what we remember as far as being ideal.

[MBishopSFX]

Eat your hearts out...Live in-concert recording of La Boheme in Atlanta (reportedly the first U.S. commercial recording since 1956!). Orchestra, chorus and singers all on-stage (no pit) and a stage director who went along with mic-ing the whole thing properly. I didn't have to fly or hide a thing.

[fifthcircle]

Originally Posted by MBishopSFX

Eat your hearts out...Live in-concert recording of La Boheme in Atlanta (reportedly the first U.S. commercial recording since 1956!). Orchestra, chorus and singers all on-stage (no pit) and a stage director who went along with mic-ing the whole thing properly. I didn't have to fly or hide a thing.

Show-off! If we could all be so lucky. BTW, nice looking rig. Bet it sounded good.

Guess La Boheme is popular right now. Both major companies here in LA are doing it/did it this year, Looks like Atlanta did it and Konrad just did it at IU.

Loving this thread... For those that deal with microphones upstage and or mounted to sets, how do you deal with setpieces that move?

--Ben

[locosoundman]

Well-aimed shotguns can also be helpful in dealing with opera singers.

I mean shotgun microphones...

[madriaan]

Hello Michael,

Thank you for the pics! Are those mics hovering over the orchestra Sanken CO-100K's? If so, how do you think they compare to the DPA 4006? I've been eyeballing these.

Many Thanks,

M.

[mpdonahue]

Our take on live opera recording is that every situation is different and requires modifying your setup accordingly.
2 examples from the opposite end of the spectrum.
Michigan Opera Theaters production of Massenet's "Werther" with Andrea Bocelli and Denise Graves. Huge stage at the Ford Theater in Detroit and orchestra of 65 players.
For this we used
4 KM143's hanging at the lip of the stage,
4 BLM's as foot mics,
4 MK-41's upstage for dialog and aria's,
2 4011's built into the set,
2 km140's for the offstage chorus
2 DPA 4060's for main's at the lip of the pit.
The Pit was mic'd with 16 microphones like a normal orchestra with spots for all the sections.
Additionally all the principals were all dressed with wireless mics. (9 total)
Mixed live for broadcast as well as multi-tracked for post.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, this summer we recorded the premiere of John Musto's "Valpone" at the Barns of Wolftrap. 300 seat theater with a small stage and orchestra of 25.
For this we used:
3 MK21's hung at the lip of the stage,
3 MK5's as foot mics
2 MK5's hung upstage for dialog
2 4060's hung for mains
12 microphones in the pit
Mixed live for stereo and surround as well as multi-tracked for post production.

All the best,
mark

[Remoteness]

Awesome thread...

You got to love this forum!

Carry on fellow Remotesters!

[roonsbane]

The biggest challenge for me is dealing with set designers, lighting and union. Those things seem to always take a priority. This past weeks Italian girl in Algiers with Vivica Genoux I used a stage setup very similar to the Met. I have ten evenly spaced mics in pairs (one shotgun along side one cardioid) along the the lip of the stage on mini stands in the lighting trough. I believe the Met uses four pairs of schoeps. This make for a uptage and downstage mic for wherever I need. Any time I have a missing pickup area, I try and hide a mic on the set. The stage is enormously deep, probably 50+'. I rarely get exactly what I really need and few people at the opera co. care if it is done right if that means seeing any mics. Unfortunately, my list of available mics for the stage lip are a bit noisy, I find myself having to suck some the low mids out. The trickiest thing is that sometimes the performers can literally be running accross the stage and a weeker singer can get behind two louder singers and there is nothing that I can do about it without wireless units on the leads. This is not an option!

Not only do I slightly limit the vocal mics on the way in with the ATI, I also buss them and compress the buss a bit. This can really help on the live mix with unwieldy sopranos that would otherwise kick my ass.

Speaking of wireless units I used to have access to sennheiser wireless units that had an XLR input and could supply Phantom power and I used to put my 4060's on those babies and then hide them on the set. This worked so well. We are holding off on new wireless units, but I am really pushing to get some of these Sennheiser wireless units ASAP.

On this opera I used a DM1000 which was fed by my ATI8MX2's and Apogee AD16X only for the stage lip mics. In the past I used a broadcast Neve that is slowly dying and has become unreliable for this application. The DM1000/ATI/Apogee setup was a big improvement!

To mic the pit I submix the entire orchestra on a midas. This includes 14 mics, many km84's and km140's and TLM103' splus spot on piano-forte and my SF24 in M/S in front of the conductor. In the future I would like to simplify the pit micing with the SF24 plus suspend some cables on either side of the conductor from the lip of the pit to the lip of the stage with omni's hanging straight down from the cables. My feeling is that this along side a few select spots would get me by with perhaps a more gelled sound.

Cameron

[fifthcircle]

Cameron brings up an interesting point... Singers relative loudness. How active of a mix do you do?

I find that you get a wildly variable set of levels on the singers depending on how far up or downstage they may be as well as how the part is written and how their voice handles it. You may get a screaming tenor or soprano on top of a mic and then a weaker alto (say in her lower register) further back.

The other big issue I find is singers that are noisy on stage and a need to duck mics as they approach. This can be because of a set piece (I had a bicycle in a recent production riding around the stage) or a costume or some other factor...

Because of this, I take a pretty active role in mixing... How about the rest of you? Do you tend to take a "hands off" approach like most other classical music or do you continually manipulate and finesse the mix?

--Ben

[jona]

Originally Posted by fifthcircle

Cameron brings up an interesting point... Singers relative loudness. How active of a mix do you do?

I find that you get a wildly variable set of levels on the singers depending on how far up or downstage they may be as well as how the part is written and how their voice handles it. You may get a screaming tenor or soprano on top of a mic and then a weaker alto (say in her lower register) further back.

The other big issue I find is singers that are noisy on stage and a need to duck mics as they approach. This can be because of a set piece (I had a bicycle in a recent production riding around the stage) or a costume or some other factor...

Because of this, I take a pretty active role in mixing... How about the rest of you? Do you tend to take a "hands off" approach like most other classical music or do you continually manipulate and finesse the mix?

--Ben

would love to hear some input on this myself. From what I understand, it's not traditional to actually mic opera at all, if taking a purist approach - yes? I'm imagining this is because opera was originally created long before electricity! So are there any conventions re compression/limiting and/or riding/automating faders etc?

[Corran]

Depends on the production, right? I just recorded a short version of The Barber of Seville, and I didn't take out the walking around and stuff...it makes it a bit more "real" sounding. If I was producing a CD of it I probably would take it out. This was just an archival recording for my college.

[John Willett]

A friend of mine who archives every performance at a leading UK opera house uses just a spaced pair of omnis, slung high out of site of the audience.

[bove]

Originally Posted by MBishopSFX

Eat your hearts out...Live in-concert recording of La Boheme in Atlanta (reportedly the first U.S. commercial recording since 1956!). Orchestra, chorus and singers all on-stage (no pit) and a stage director who went along with mic-ing the whole thing properly. I didn't have to fly or hide a thing.

How were all those Blumlein pairs (84s, 88) mixed into your final product? Thats a lot of microphones in front there.

[Corran]

Originally Posted by John Willett

A friend of mine who archives every performance at a leading UK opera house uses just a spaced pair of omnis, slung high out of site of the audience.

Let them balance themselves

[MBishopSFX]

Originally Posted by bove

How were all those Blumlein pairs (84s, 88) mixed into your final product? Thats a lot of microphones in front there.

There were five stereo pairs of R-84s and single R-88s covering the five "zones" I set up. The final mix was made "live" to stereo DSD, so I rode the ten faders while watching the stage movements on the video monitors. The fader movements sort of looked like a wave as the singers moved across the stage. Having a helper call stage cues was essential for the off-stage entrances which were covered by another pair on each wing. There were usually only two stereo pairs of vocal mics open at any given time. I also had (5) R-84s on the chorus. Orchestra was covered by (6) Sanken CO-100k mics while the surround pickups were handled by Royer SF-24s.

[bove]

Originally Posted by MBishopSFX

The final mix was made "live" to stereo DSD, so I rode the ten faders while watching the stage movements on the video monitors. The fader movements sort of looked like a wave as the singers moved across the stage.

Amazing! What a neat way to capture the sound of the singers. In addition to making sure no one gets too far away from a microphone, does this technique also reduce the movement of the singers in the stereo picture?

I can't really tell from the picture, but where did you position the six Sanken omnis in relation to the orchestra, and how was that mixed together to create the orchestral sound? I'm assuming you relied heavily on two of the mics?

Thanks for the info! Very cool setup!

[clownjuggles]

Mike,

I can't seem to see the audio files recently. Can you link those again? And where can I buy said recording of Boheme.

I can't wait to hear the recording.

[kstrauss]

Originally Posted by Corran

Let them balance themselves

Not really a practical approach with opera, at least live opera, since the mics cannot be placed in sightlines of get in the way of the lighting. You can hang a pair high in the hall but that position will tend to sound too ambient.

[Corran]

Well for archival recording (what the poster I quoted was talking about) the extra ambiance would probably be okay. But yeah, it depends on the situation that is being recorded and such.

[Thomas W. Bethe]

When I was doing the Cleveland Opera I used the following setup.

6 cardioid microphones taped to 1/2" sorbothane (Sorbothane, Inc.) for the on stage singers. No foot noise and they were out of the sight lines of the audience. The middle two were X-Y with their heads together and the rest were pointed strait back.

For the orchestra I used 4 omni microphones across the front of the pit plus spot microphones as needed for "specials" I also used two shotgun microphones positioned stage left and stage right for really deep sets.

The main problem I ran into was the union. I could not touch my own microphones and instead of giving me someone who was a qualified sound tech I us usually ended up with the guy who was doing props the night before and knew nothing of microphones or how to set them up. Considering that these people were members of IATSE they seemed to have a lot of problems understanding house right and left from stage right and left and usually got the microphones all plugged in wrong. For a while we were using self powered microphones and they had to be turned on before the performance and on more than one occasion the person helping me "forgot" to turn them on. The local IATSE has undergone some fairly major changes in recent years and they seem to be much more understanding of the needs of guest engineers than when I was doing the Cleveland Opera.

I stopped doing the opera because the orchestra demanded an additional $75.00 per member per night for the privilege of having them recorded and the Cleveland Opera said they could not afford the additional money.

Too bad it was a fun gig while it lasted.

[Robobo1]

Thomas, where do you buy the 1/2" sorbothane?

[Robobo1]

This is an old thread, but it's a goody... I'll chime in...

My mixing for the MN Opera (set up with the help of Cameron's amazing ears) is very, very active. I have a producer helping with cues (she gives mic and fader position) and I try to keep only the floor mics open that are absolutely necessary. The previous production, Barber of Seville, was VERY active and I had the "wave" mixing discussed below... but the current production of The Pearl Fishers is much more tame and I usually only have two mics open at a time.

We're using 5 Schoeps MK4s and 5 Schoeps CMIT5U shots across the front. The shots are realllllly nice! There are one or two points in the opera when I wish I had an upstage mic, but those two occurrences happen so quickly (2 seconds) that it's not worth the trouble and the possible problems.