LOS ANGELES — In partnership with Dutch classical recording company Pentatone, Boston-based production house Soundmirror was recently chosen to coordinate the digital recordings of composer John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles, performed by the Los Angeles Opera at the LA Opera House’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Soundmirror owner John Newton and engineer Mark Donahue used DPA Microphones’ d:screet 4071 Miniature and d:dicate 4006 and 4011 Recording Microphone to record the cast and orchestra.
In addition to being captured for an audio-only digital recording, in high-resolution surround sound, the performance also occurred in front of a live audience. With many singers participating in the production, Newton needed to ensure that the mics he used were accurate yet totally concealable.The d:screet 4071 Omnidirectional mics with low cut and presence boost, which are designed to secure high speech intelligibility in body worn situations, proved to be the ideal option for each of the 24 performers.
“We’ve been DPA users from the very beginning so we didn’t need to search through the company’s catalog,” says Newton. “Going into production, we knew it was critical for the mics to be consistent performance after performance. We had no doubt that the d:screet 4071s would deliver on this. Our biggest concern was making sure that the costume designers secured the mics in the same exact position each night, so that something like a piece of a curl didn’t cover a microphone or that it didn’t flip under the wig. We never worried about the microphones’ sound consistency.”
