An open-air performance of Alexander Borodin’s opera Prince Igor by the Astrakhan State Theatre Opera and Ballet was staged in the city of Astrakhan, Southern Russia, recently. Against the backdrop of the Cathedral of the Assumption and in front of an audience of more than 5,000, an Allen & Heath dLive S Class system handled the mix.

Russia’s MixArt was responsible for audio for the event, having already worked with the Astrakhan State Theatre on a number of high-profile projects. Both FOH and monitor mixes were handled by a dLive system consisting of an S5000 and S7000 running in multi-surface mode on a DM64 MixRack and three DX Expanders.

To handle the complexities of the large performance, the S7000 was used to mix the main orchestra and the S5000 mixed the vocalists, choir and instrumental soloists. Both consoles fed the main PA, delay speakers, front fill and monitors. The S5000 was equipped with a Waves V3 card for multitrack recording and a Madi card to enable sound effects playback.

‘With such a large number of microphones, stage monitors and a sound reinforcement system consisting of а main PA and a few delay speaker lines and front fill – all in the open air, it was a very challenging project,’ says Vadim Scherbakov, MixArt’s chief sound engineer for the project at the Astrakhan Kremlin. ‘It was the first time I ever used a dLive system consisting of one MixRack and two surfaces and it worked perfectly with absolutely no issues with latency and synchronisation.’

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