The latest Holiday on Ice show in production is Romanza, with this season's performances scheduled in Germany, Korea and France. The central theme of the Romanza show are the world's most famous love stories, from Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" to Puccini's "Madame Butterfly". Artistic director Frank Wentink, choreochrapher Jamie Isley and their creative team have put together a spectacular show about love and hate. With flying acts, acrobatics, top-quality skating, lighting by an award-winning designer and breathtaking costumes, Romanza takes you on an unforgettable journey into the world of passion and love.
The sound design for the show was in the hands of Leo van den Boogaard, who has a 30-year track record of sound designs for international productions such as the European musicals Cats, The Sound of Motown and Black and Blue, and is a regular in the creative team of Stage Entertainment productions. "With this show we aimed for a centralised sound reinforcement concept, increasing the efficiency of the PA system by using a very compact high quality system," says Boogaard.
Selecting the Nexo Geo-S system, the transport volume was decreased to almost half of the conventional size, so set-up and break-down time could be reduced drastically, maintaining the high audio quality required for this show. In total, 38 Geo S850, six Geo S830 and eight CD-18 subs are used for the complete production, driven by 12 CAMCO Vortex 6 amplifiers. As the tour lands in a wide variety of venues around the world, every time the speaker system has to be re-designed to meet the venue's acoustic characteristics. "Selecting the Geo-S system solved that part of the challenge. The other big improvement was to go digital with the mixing console, landing on the Yamaha PM5D. Using the PM5D allowed us to drive the speaker system with the same flexibility, using the PM5D's built in delays, EQ's and graphics without having to set up additional outboard speaker management systems". The only equipment in the siderack is a Tascam MX2424 with MX view and increased HD capacity for playback of the music and effects tracks, a 360systems Instant Replay machine and the hardware for the Sennheiser 5000 series wireless microphone systems and 3000-series in-ear monitor systems used for announcements, live-music acts etc. All dynamics, PEQs, GEQs and effects are used on the PM5D. "The PM5D is the perfect size for this show, it takes all inputs from the Tascam and replay machines, actors, announcers with ample inputs and mixbuses left for the many cases we have a guest performance or have to set up additional output locations. Most important: it's a PM class console, which means that it has both the audio quality and the reliability level we need for these kind of international touring productions".
(Lee Baldock)
