The unstoppable rise of stage amplification

Recent acquisition of some insanely expensive hearing aids aimed at helping me out in cacophonous restaurants has set me thinking about the extent that modern life allows us to filter our intake of noise. This is big business. As sirens wail and Marvel blockbusters and rock concerts crash through legal decibel levels, controlling sound levels has become an increasingly sophisticated operation, abetted by everything from silicone pastilles and the volume-control knob to the wireless earbud.

Concert halls and opera houses remain havens of what one might call ‘natural’ acoustics, places where the alchemy of balancing convex and concave surfaces with reflective and absorbent materials creates an environment in which reverberating warmth can coexist with clarity and a whisper can carry as far as a shout. London is blessed with the Wigmore Hall and Royal Opera House in this respect (the Royal Albert, Royal Festival and Barbican halls are generally deemed unhelpful by performers, if not audiences).   Although it remains a point of dignity that in such venues classical musicians aren’t electronically amplified – they refuse to, as it were, cheat with a bionic boost – it’s a principle for which Joe Public will never give them credit. But just put a Wagnerian soprano such as Lise Davidsen singing, undoctored, alongside a belter such as Adele, and Joe would be stunned by the comparative puniness of the latter’s vocal production.

In theatres, it’s a different story: the magnificent roar of a Donald Wolfit or Alan Howard, organically generated and projected, is a thing of the past. Look for the tell-tale credit ‘sound designer’ halfway down the billing: it can be evidence that the actors will be communicating through an invisible cellophane layer that gives an entirely manufactured sheen to the words they are uttering, allowing them to go sotto voce and pass Marlon Brando mumbling off as emotional authenticity.