It’s not often that the Audio/Video team is asked to make audio sound worse, but that was the case in Later the Same Evening and A Blizzard On Marblehead Neck. In Later the Same Evening there is a scene which involves music being played from an old radio, and in Blizzard On Marblehead Neck music must play from an old phonograph. Instead of recording the singing and modifying the sounds to create the desired effect, it was decided that this piece would be queued into the music, so they set out to create a way for live singing to sound as if it were coming through the tiny radio or phonograph.
The solution was to put the singers in a large, concrete room behind the orchestra pit. In order for the singers to receive their cue, a television monitor showing live feed from the conductor, along with a speaker streaming audio from the orchestra, was installed in the room. This enables the singers to see their cue from the conductor and hear the orchestra.
Even with all of these installations, the singers sounded too good. By turning down the bass and mid-range frequencies, the desired result was finally achieved. At The Glimmerglass Festival, singers never use microphones for volume enhancement, however in this case it was necessary to use microphones in order to create the desired effects.
