A New Broom Sweeps Clean
It is a tradition that the Concerto In Occasione Della Festa Nazionale
della Repubblica is held in Rome on the eve of the Day of the Republic
(i.e. June 2). The location of the event is the Quirinale, the highest
of the seven »classical« hills of Rome where the President
of Italy resides.
Broadcasting and sound reinforcement of this concert is always up
to the Italian broadcasting service RAI. In 2000, four digital consumer
desks were employed for this purpose, which then resulted in a disaster
thanks to lacking reliability. The PA performance was so bad that the
RAI had to accept an official protest letter. Its sender: Azeglio Ciampi,
the Italian President himself!
Therefore, reliability was a must for this year's performance. And
after the successful open-air playing of La Traviata, everything called
for the equipment that had been utilized there: Nexus and Cantus.
There were some more sophisticated components to be employed beside
the Stage Tec systems. For example, all instruments, the solo singers,
and the choir were recorded using Schöps microphones, while the
ambience was transmitted by a Neumann stereo microphone. An amusing
fact: Two of the choir microphones failed due to a heavy shower occurring
immediately before the start of the show; a short-circuit was caused
by the phantom power that was already being applied to the condenser
microphones, so the microphones could not be returned to operation.
However, the concert was performed (and broadcasted) even with just
two choir microphones and (unlike the year before) was a huge success.
And even the President was reportedly very satisfied.
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