Hanover State Opera
HOME IS WHERE THE ART IS – KLING & FREITAG VIDA L AT THE HANOVER STATE OPERA
The opera house in Hanover has a long history. From the start of construction work in 1845, it was clear that this house was serious business. The stage is one of the larger examples of its kind and in the auditorium there is room for at least 1200 visitors in the stalls and on the three balconies. Over the years, the opera has managed to make themselves talked about with exciting productions. In 2020, the house even received the renowned “Oper!” award as “Best Opera House of the Year”. Of course, we are particularly proud to be represented in the opera house of our hometown Hanover with our technological flagship K&F VIDA L, even if we are a bit sad that the “old” sound system (also K&F) had to be removed for this.
As part of the conversion work, an array consisting of four VIDA L elements was flushmounted into the proscenium, which means that the system is hard to see. Since no mechanical tilting is necessary with VIDA due to the advanced beam steering algorithms, the system can be installed exactly vertically – and thus extremely inconspicuously – and the only 21cm wide front contributes to the fact that the loudspeakers are virtually invisible. Acoustically, however, VIDA L is anything but inconspicuous! After all, there are 24 6.5″ woofers, 48 3.5″ midrange drivers and a total of 128 1″ silk domes in the tweeter on each side. Power is provided by the integrated 192 power amplifier channels, each of which has its own DSP channel. These figures alone illustrate what is technologically required here. But technology is far from everything:
“A loudspeaker is more than just a hodgepodge of technical components, technology is just a tool and the purpose must always be to transmit highly emotional musical messages with as little loss as possible,” says Jürgen Freitag, founder and CEO of Kling & Freitag. “When I started building speakers with Martin Kling more than 40 years ago, we just wanted to have the best sound. No more and no less. It was always about music, about art. We are now developing highly engineered systems with incredible capabilities, but the bottom line is to transmit art in all its clarity, purity and subtlety without letting too much of it get stuck in the transmission chain. Our job as loudspeaker manufacturers is to lose as little as possible of the emotional message on the way from the artist to the listener. This sounds trivial, but the opposite is true. We have always felt at home where the art is. The art on stage, but also the art of craftsmanship behind our products”
Voices:
“Of course, we are pleased that Kling & Freitag was able to convince so clearly with the VIDA in the shootout. The precision of the radiation and the clarity of the sound are clearly perceptible, so that VIDA was clearly ahead. VIDA not only achieves technically very good sound reinforcement, the result is also extremely musical and natural. That’s exactly what you want in a house like ours.”
Bernhard Helmdorf, head of the sound department, Hanover Opera House“When planning, it is particularly important to us that the sound reinforcement is as even as possible and not only sounds good in one place. With VIDA we were able to achieve a very even result in the Hanover Opera, so that every single seat is provided with excellent sound. In the end, that completely convinced us.”
Dr. Reiner Chemnitius, responsible planner, TME Group