On the tenth anniversary of the death of Luciano Pavarotti, Friends & Partners Group and the Luciano Pavarotti Foundation produced “Un Emozione senza fine” (An endless emotion), using no less than six DiGiCo mixing consoles.

The show, which paid tribute to the world-famous tenor with a stellar cast including Placido Domingo, José Carreras and top Italian pop stars, was staged in the Verona Arena, Italy and aired live in prime time nationwide on TV and radio.

Agorà of L’Aquila, the event’s audio and lighting contractor, provided the consoles to contend with a 70-piece orchestra, an electric rhythm section and numerous singers performing virtual duets with ‘Big Luciano’.

At the FOH platform, Daniel Tramontani (audio chief and designer of the event’s complex set-up) and Marco Monforte, were supported by Francesco Passeri.

“I used an SD7 for the orchestra mix and sent a L/R feed to Marco, who manned another SD7 and added the rest – band, vocals, etc., putting together the final mix for the audience,” Tramontani explained. “As well as the great sound quality, my favourite SD7 features are its great resources and the Optocore protocol. In this specific case, it was a great help, because on large important events, the availability of resources (channels, groups, aux sends, matrices, etc.) is fundamental, as has the possibility of sharing part of them over an extremely reliable network.”

“As well as his crucial role as FOH assistant, Francesco manned an SD11 handling speech mics and external contributions (including Andrea Bocelli from Rome and Ron Howard from Los Angeles),” added Monforte. “This left us free to concentrate exclusively on the very delicate musical aspects.”

On stage, an identical console set-up on monitor duty was helmed by Umberto Polidori (electric band, guest vocalists, MCs and guests) and Gianluca Bertoldi (orchestra members’ and conductors’ monitors), assisted by Luca Scornavacca.

“On the two desks we used 168 of the 224 input channels via an Optocore ring and four DiGiCo SD-Racks,” said Polidori. “I began using it ten years ago, as soon as it arrived at Agorà and, on this production, it helped me organise the layers, enabling me to find channels fast, and its intuitive customisable patching was fundamental.”

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