2008
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Visionary Theatre - An Opera House, Countless Stars, And An
AURUS-Based OB Truck
St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre is one of Russia’s most prestigious
venues, with a remarkable history that goes back all the way
to 1860. Now, however, modernism has arrived – with an annex designed by
a top architect and its own OB vehicle with an audio
control room equipped with State-of-the-art technology
In its long history, the distinguished house has already seen
countless
premiere performances of operas and ballets. More recently, it has
attracted international attention with star soloists such as Anna
Netrebko and Olga Borodina. Now a refurbishment, and the
construction of an adjacent new building, will take the pressure off
the main stages which have long been much too small. After the
completion of this project, musical excellence will be assured into
the future. Until then however, the Mariinsky Theater will stay closed
to the public, forcing the ensemble to tour the world with its latest
productions.
Against this backdrop, Valery Gergiev, renowned visionary artistic
director of the State Academic Mariinsky Theatre, came up with the
idea of purchasing an OB Truck for the theatre to enable it to record
its touring performances and produce its own DVDs based on the
material thus acquired. A nice option, he considered, would be the
possibility of transmitting the recordings to St. Petersburg to allow
the local audience to follow the performances on gigantic screens.
 First The Sound…
Designing the Mariinsky OB truck proved to be a very exciting
project. The emphasis was firmly on pristine audio quality, with the
video component – although planned to be undertaken in the HD
format – in a supporting role. This priority is evident when you look
at the exceptionally large control room, the biggest ever designed
for an OB truck by system integrator Sony Professional Services UK.
It occupies around a third of the OB truck’s interior space, the
remaining two thirds being dedicated to video control and video
editing.
The audio and mixing technology was supplied by STAGETEC to meet
the most exacting audio standards. The 48-fader AURUS console was
installed lengthways in the truck. When the truck’s two sides are
extended, the audio control room is almost fi ve metres deep,
providing ample space for optimum positioning of the 5.1 speaker system. The
fully-loaded AURUS console contains seven DSP cards
with enough processing power for all the channels needed to record
and mix in the surround format.
Live And Without Downtime
Given the focus on the audio aspect, at the planning stage a great
deal of emphasis was placed on the reliability of the audio system.
With its 376-to-280 matrix, the comprehensive NEXUS audio network
was designed for fully redundant operation. To this end, each
Base Device contains two optical cards to provide redundancy to
guard against downtime resulting from a defective optical line as
well as from a damaged XFOC card. Though this design was most
important for the two mobile Base Devices, it was also implemented
in the five Base Devices installed in the truck.
The recording section had to be equally dependable and fault
tolerant. In addition to the main Pyramix multitrack recording
system, another Nuendo Digital Audio Workstation is also available
for backup copies, for a total of 128 recording tracks simultaneously
available in both of them. Each system has its own Level-5 RAID with
a storage capacity of two terabytes. If that proves insuffi cient, up to
four MADI ports installed on the NEXUS system can be used to
connect additional external recording equipment.
The Pyramix system is well on the way to become the standard
solution for AURUS users, therefore programming the AURUS
console remote control functions for the recording system was a
routine exercise. From simple transport control to track arming in
record mode, all important machine functions can be controlled
directly from the console. AURUS is fi tted with four remote control
units, which can also be used to control video machines.
 …And Then Vision
Unlike the audio control room, where the racks are virtually full and
most of the devices have been fully expanded, the video control and editing sections
still have ample room for expansion. The truck is
equipped with 16 HD cameras and two specialist minicams but
cabling and routing is already installed for a total of up to 26
cameras. All video connections use HD-SDI and can be freely
patched on an nVision router.
Of course, there is also the audio-follows-video functionality provided
by most OB trucks for TV applications. In this case, it allows NEXUS
to automatically switch audio tracks as the vision mixer selects
different picture sources. This integration was surprisingly easy to
achieve, because implementing the slave connection was a simple
matter of activating a serial connection between the NEXUS and the
video router.
Opera Or TV?
The Mariinsky Theatre is probably the fi rst opera house in the world
to have its own OB truck. Everyone is eager to see how this audiobiased
HD truck will perform in practice – it was only delivered to St.
Petersburg in December 2007.
This bold concept leaves plenty of room for expansion. It will raise
the profi le of Russian opera by bringing it to TV and the world both
during the tour and when the refurbished hall becomes operational.
A very different baptism has already been achieved successfully. The
truck‘s fi rst major assignment was completed in February 2008
covering the Laureus Sports Awards. The ceremony was transmitted
from St. Petersburg to 83 countries throughout the world.
The Golden Venture
A black granite cube vaulted by a huge gold-tinted glass honeycomb
roof: this avant-garde concept by controversial French architect
Dominique Perrault won the international competition run to select
the design for an annex to the venerable Mariinsky Theatre in Saint
Petersburg in 2003. Connected to the existing structure by a new
bridge, this 100-million-dollar extension is being constructed beyond
the Krykov channel. There is nothing undersized here: Under the
golden cocoon, entrance halls, restaurants, and galleries are spread
around the core building, which houses a concert hall for 2000
spectators, fi ve secondary stages, and rehearsal facilities for
orchestras, choirs, and ballet companies.
The architecturally daring New Theatre will be fi nished in 2009.
According to the city fathers it will become a symbol of the modern
and Western orientation of the metropolis by the Neva River. Until
then, the OB truck will broadcast key performances from other
Russian stages to Saint Petersburg.
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