Naxos brings 'Nixon' alive from Ellie stage

By Marc Shulgold, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published June 20, 2008 at 3 p.m.

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Photo by Ellen Jaskol / The Rocky

Recording engineer John Newton works with equipment at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House as he and fellow Naxos engineer Tim Handley prepare to record Opera Colorado's production of Nixon in China.

Surrounded by electronic equipment in a cramped, hot room deep inside the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, Tim Handley and John Newton sat dealing with the sweat - but otherwise comfortable in their element.

The veteran record producer/engineers were preparing earlier this month to record all four performances of Opera Colorado's Nixon in China for the classical Naxos label.

The recording of John Adams' opera, due in stores next spring, was a big deal for the company. Opera Colorado general director Greg Carpenter called it "an exciting opportunity" for his company.

For Newton and Handley, though, it was just another day at the office, even though this particular office failed to offer the control and security (not to mention air conditioning) of a recording studio.

"A live recording is not better or worse than a studio recording," Handley suggested. "It's just a different game."

Just as, Newton added, "going to an opera performance is different from listening to a recording. It's not a question of seeking perfection. The musical excitement is as important as obtaining note-perfection."

"The most important thing is telling the story," said Handley. "And to make sure the listener hears the words."

The two have been "telling the story" in recordings for a long time. Handley, a soft-spoken Englishman, has made about 200 CDs for Naxos and won seven Grammys.

Newton, who bears an uncanny resemblance to composer Adams, has worked for Vanguard as well as the Boston Symphony, capturing its gleaming sound for two decades in Symphony Hall and the orchestra's summer home at Tanglewood. He also has won a handful of Grammys and recorded the first go-round of Adams' opera in 1987.

The two were in a relaxed mood after a morning spent adjusting microphone placements and recording levels. Not that any such project is a walk in the park, but capturing this one was doubly tricky - starting with the army of Colorado Symphony players and freelancers in the pit.

"If we were in the studio," Handley said, "we could get the (three) synthesizer keyboards in a good groove, really get control of their sound. And we could set it up so the singers could hear each other easily."

Such shortcomings come with the challenge of recording large-scale music, particularly the multilayered sounds of opera.

Another challenge was the hall, a place new to both men. To deal with the unknown, Newton arrived at the Ellie with every weapon in his arsenal.

"We brought 50 percent more equipment that we ended up using," he explained.

Adding to the Naxos team's jungle of cables and microphones was extra gear needed to amplify the singers and players for the Ellie audiences, as specified by Adams (sound designer Brian Mohr handled that aspect).

The team used a dress rehearsal to get a feel for the hall's acoustics (which they deemed "dry," but not overly so), and to adjust several of the microphone positionings.

However, their battle plan going in remained unchanged: four microphones placed along the footlights and seven tiny mics dangled from wires above the stage; also, a sharing of some of the house amplification microphones placed in the pit and concealed on the principal singers.

In all, 46 mics would be converted to digital signals by a stack of preamps and fed into a Sony DMX-R100 mixer and, finally, to a pair of digital recorders.

After the four performances, a session would be held during which the sound was cleaned up and the selection of scenes and arias made. Handley said jumping midstream from one version of the opera to another was not an option, since tempos are too inconsistent to mix and match.

The final, crucial editing decisions would be made by Handley and conductor Marin Alsop. Yet the biggest decision in this project came two years earlier. That was when Naxos chief Klaus Heymann gave the green light to record Nixon. Alsop, a major star at the label, was a key player in that move. She even contributed seed money, according to CSO president Doug Adams.

The decision to record the opera came "from the alignment of many stars," Alsop said.

"I'd been discussing projects with Klaus (Heymann) for some time. He'd been wanting to do more Adams. I was contracted by Opera Colorado in 2005, and the next year I pitched the idea to Klaus."

Responding by e-mail from his Hong Kong office, Heymann wrote that it took little convincing from Alsop.

"When I first found out that she would be doing Nixon in China in Colorado I immediately suggested recording the performances for Naxos."

Alsop and Handley already had teamed on about a dozen recordings, including the four Brahms symphonies for Naxos. "He knows how I think," she said of the producer.

Though it's impossible to predict if the recording will sell well, it's a safe bet that no one will get rich from it. This is more about raising the international profile of Opera Colorado, Carpenter suggested. Neither his company nor the CSO has had to invest in the project, since production costs are being paid by Naxos (Heymann declined to provide a figure).

A studio recording, it was understood at the start, would not be an option, because of the busy schedules of all involved.

"I'm not much on antiseptic recordings anyway," Alsop said, voicing no concern with the inevitable extraneous audience and stage noises - nor with the fear that something might go terribly wrong.

"I've had things break down in the studio. The main thing is that here, you get the excitement of the live experience."

Shulgoldm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5296

About Naxos

* Naxos Records refers to itself as the "world's leading classical music label" with 2,500 titles in its catalog. It was founded in 1987 by Klaus Heymann, who changed the business of recorded classical music by providing the standard musical repertoire on compact disc at a lower price. They've since added an Internet subscription service, audio books, DVDs and educational products.

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