An Initial Study Of The Effect Of Orchestra Position On Acoustics In Chinese Local Opera Houses

As one of the three ancient drama culture in the world, Chinese local opera has itsdistinctive national characteristics and it’s quite different from the western opera orchestra.Since the twentieth century, the implantation of western-style theatre has brought greatchanges to Chinese local opera theaters, especially for the appearance of proscenium stageand orchestra pit between stage and audience. In traditional drama theaters, the Chinese operaorchestra has always been located on the left side of the stage. But with the development ofthe modern theaters, the number of the players and instruments are expanding, the orchestrabegins to play in the pit rather than the left side of the stage. However, the acoustical changehas not been examined yet.In this study, a typical theater in Guangzhou is used to investigate the the effect oforchestra position on acoustics in Chinese local opera houses. First of all, acousticalmeasurements were conducted with different sound source positions in the theater. It wasfound that orchestra position has a significant impact on acoustical parameters. When thesource was on the left side of the stage, the reverberation time was higher and the value ofclarity was lower. The strength was deeply decayed compared to that with the source in the pit.Meanwhile, the value of Balance with the orchestra on the left side of the stage is muchhigher, far beyond the suitable range of Balance in western opera houses. What’s more, bystudying the inhomogeneous distribution of sound field when the source is on the left side ofthe stage, it was found that the sound energy was quite unevenly distributed in the left andright zone of the auditorium, especially in the stalls. At last, an auditory experiment wasconducted to investigated the effect of orchestra position on subjective evaluation of soundfield. The results showed that orchestra playing in the pit or on the left side of the stage has anobvious influence on subjective evaluation.This is the first time to investigate the effect of orchestra position on acousticalparameters and subjective evaluation of sound field in auditorium, which opens up new linesof thinking on acoustics in Chinese local opera houses. At the same time, it provides abeneficial exploration of adaptation study of modern theater forms and Chinese operaperformance.