Bregenz, Austria (September 13, 2023)—For nearly 80 years, Austria’s annual Bregenz Festival has presented opera and music on the Seebühne, the largest floating stage in the world. This year’s production—Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, staged on a 23×33-meter, 300-ton set—played to sold-out crowds within the surrounding 6,658-seat open-air amphitheater on the Lake Constance shoreline. Covering that audience in audio were KV2 systems made up the core of the complex main system serving the Seebühne and its auditorium.
“We have been using a point-source-based system for many years now as we found it was the most efficient way to handle the various constraints of working on an outdoor production with a live orchestra and a complex set,” said Clemens Wannemacher, the festival’s head of sound. He and Alwin Bösch, deputy head of sound, spec’d a system based around KV2 ESR212s for a facility audio upgrade.
The venue’s loudspeaker setup sports more than 40 loudspeakers hidden in the stage alone from Kling & Freitag, Adamson and JBL—and now KV2’s VHD1.21 and VHD2.16subs as well as three horizontal ESR212s. “The stage has ‘holes’ with small platforms behind them that house the loudspeakers,” said Wannemacher. “The holes are covered with a metal grid that is partially covered with plaster and then painted. There are no dedicated monitor-loudspeakers for the singers. They are effectively standing in front of the PA, so they pretty much hear what the audience hears.”
KV2 Audio Debuts ESD8 Loudspeaker
More PA boxes are mounted on poles surrounding the venue; on either side of the set are two poles with four levels of loudspeakers each, featuring two KV2 ESR212s in the middle sandwiched between Kling & Freitag Spectra 212s top and bottom.
Smaller poles surround the rest of the listening area equipped with three levels of K&F Spectra 212 and CA1001CX (along each side) and two levels of Adamson P12 (across the rear). There are also several K&F LINUS loudspeakers placed beneath the seats in the middle of the audience zone as well as some JBL subs.
