Diagnosis of an historical performance hall: case study

Abstract

The Opera of Vichy is an historical Italian style performance hall. Initially solely devoted to opera performance, the economical trends have pushed towards concert and theatre. A first major refurbishment was performed in the 1990s and prior to that a diagnosis of that hall was performed in order to characterize the acoustics of the facility prior to actual work being carried out. While the historical preservation constraints did not allow for much acoustical work to be performed, the hall proved to be quite decent. However, in order to improve the intelligibility for theatre purposes, a new diagnosis was recently carried out so as to support the relevant computer simulations. After a brief reminder of the historical background of the project, this paper submits the diagnosis procedure that was followed, as well as its main conclusions regarding the fitness of the hall for the various performances. It turns out that such a diagnosis can be a convincing tool in order to help both the design team and the end user understand the implications - and the limitations too!- of the existing facility and its possible developments.