Japan's Shiki Theatre Company, known for bringing renowned musicals such as CATS, The Phantom of the Opera and Mamma Mia! to the Japanese stage, has successfully opened its latest production direct from Broadway. Disney Theatrical's acclaimed musical AIDA opened on December 21st, 2003 at the MBS Theatre in Osaka. The award winning production, based on the works of Auguste Mariette and Giuseppe Verdi's opera, tells the story of the triangular love between Aida, a captured Nubian princess, Amneris, an Egyptian princess, and Radames, an Egyptian army captain who has the love of both Aida and Amneris. The award-winning score by Elton John and Tim Rice is their first since their collaboration on the highly successful Disney production, The Lion King.

In keeping with many of the world's top musical productions L-ACOUSTICS sound reinforcement products have been implemented within the overall sound design.

The centre cluster configuration is identical to the US Tour production of AIDA, with two independent L-ACOUSTICS dV-DOSC arrays, each comprising of 9 cabinets, reinforcing the main characters on a per scene basis. Two arrays are being used to provide necessary separation between the lead characters. However, in contrast to the Broadway version, L-ACOUSTICS speakers are also being utilized to reinforce the orchestration. For this application three ARCS, plus one high power SB218 subwoofer are configured either side of the stage. Shiki's Masakazu Kanamori explains the reasoning behind this decision. "After receiving all the documentation from Disney Theatrical and deciding that we would open the show in Osaka, we had to study the requirements in detail. We finally concluded that the audio performance would be better for the Japan production if we used ARCS speakers instead of those used on the Broadway production. I later visited America to propose this idea to John Shivers, who is the Associate Sound Designer for AIDA, as well as visit both the AIDA National Tour in San Antonio and the Broadway production in New York."

Shiki's Sound Division team determined that by using three ARCS either side of the stage they were better able to provide broader coverage within the auditorium, especially across the front seats, as well as minimizing reflections against the auditorium walls because of ARCS' high degree of directivity and predictable coverage. Shiki have a large inventory of L-ACOUSTICS speakers, and have consequently used ARCS as main speakers for a number of other major productions.

After auditioning the ARCS speakers in New York, John Shivers approved their use in the Osaka production.

A mix of L-ACOUSTICS amplifiers are used with LA-24a 2-channel power amplifiers providing power to the ARCS while the higher rated LA-48a amplifiers power the dV-DOSC clusters and SB218 subwoofers. Feeds to the amplifiers are provided from a Cadac J-Type FOH console via a networked XTA 224 Speaker Management System.

The other major difference between the two productions is that orchestration is played back via hard disc recorder in Osaka, unlike on Broadway, where a live orchestra is used. Therefore according to Masakazu Kanamori, "it was necessary for us to make a lot of proposals to John Shivers and make alterations to the original sound design. Fortunately though most of our proposals were approved!"

AIDA is currently taking bookings up until the end of August 2004.

Bestec Audio Inc., L-ACOUSTICS ' exclusive distributor in Japan, supplied Shiki with their speaker systems.

www.shiki.gr.jp - www.bestecaudio.com