No abstract

The Eszterháza Opera House was a theatre built by the will of the Hungarian Prince Nikolaus Esterházy in the second half of the 18th century that had to compete in greatness and grandeur against Austrian Empire. The composer that inextricably linked his name to this theatre was Haydn that served the prince and composed pieces for him for many years. The Opera House disappeared from the palace complex maps around 1865 and was destroyed permanently during the Second World War. This study aims to reconstruct the original shape and materials of the theatre, thanks to the documents founded by researchers in the library of the Esterházy family at Forchtenstein, the Hungarian National Library, and analyze its acoustic behavior. With the 3D model of the theatre, acoustic simulations were performed using the architectural acoustic software Ramsete to understand its acoustical characteristics and if the architecture of the Eszterháza Opera House could favor the Prince’s listening. The obtained results show that the union between the large volume of the theatre and the reflective materials makes the Opera House a reverberant space. The acoustic parameters are considered acoustically favorable both for the music and for the speech transmission too. Moreover, the results confirm that the geometry and the shape of the Eszterháza Opera House favored the Prince’s view and listening, amplifying onstage voices and focusing the sound into his box.

The acoustic studies of the Italian Opera theatres have been improved their accuracy by the development of a new generation technology. An acoustic survey has been undertaken inside the Galli theatre of Rimini in order to show the acoustic parameters as required by the regulations (ISO 3382-1). Furthermore, a multichannel spherical array microphone has been employed to add value to this acoustic investigation by illustrating the impulse response (IR) through an overlay video. The outcomes of this additional provision have been recorded with some snaps related to different moments of the IR decay. The authors of this paper illustrate also a brief history of the Galli theatre of Rimini, including the description of the architectural features that characterize this important Opera house.