Oper im Steinbruch — Der Fliegende Holländer

One of the world's largest outdoor opera productions, with none of the acoustic support an opera house gives you. Everything is amplified: soloists on redundant headsets across a 60-metre stage, a choir adding more than 60 wireless channels, and an orchestra playing from a building beside the stage where no direct sound reaches the audience.

Position trackers feed a TiMax system that distributes each singer across the loudspeaker design in level and timing, so the audience always knows who is singing. The orchestra is captured with a combination of ambient and close mics, and an Amadeus Acoustics active acoustic system with surround speakers around the whole audience area supplies the reverberation and tonal colour the quarry can't. Three of us work every show: one mixing, one controlling the system and one on the score running mute cues and playback.

Twenty-four performances with rotating casts and every balance flown by hand, every night, with clear localisation from the front rail to the back of the quarry.