THE ACOUSTICS OF THE BAYREUTH FESTSPIELHAUS Massimo Garai DIN, University of Bologna, viale Risorgimento 2, 40136 Bologna, Italy Ken Ito University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan Dario D’Orazio, Simona De Cesaris, Federica Morandi DIN, University of Bologna, viale Risorgimento 2, 40136 Bologna, Italy email: massimo.garai@unibo.it The role of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in the development of the modern opera house is well known. In spite of the prestige of the Festspielhaus, the values of its room acoustics criteria have been analyzed and reported in few works. A measurement campaign has been recently made in the theatre, placing directional and omnidirectional sources on the stage and in the orchestra pit. Monaural and binaural impulse responses have been recorded on a dense mesh of receivers. Normal factors have been extracted and subjective scale values have been estimated taking into account the peculiarity of the Wagnerian opera. 1. Introduction The Festspielhaus in Bayreuth is an example of a performance hall designed and built following specific requirements in acoustics, lighting and social aspects. The theatre was designed by Richard Wagner and Otto Brükwald coupling the stage (measuring about 30 m x 30 m x 40 m) with a graded amphitheatre inserted in a rectangular box with lateral walls, columns and decorated ceiling. The design mixed the Italian theatre form (the acoustic separation between stage and audience, the scenic arch as a source of early reflections) and the European symphonic hall (the acoustic field and the ge- ometric proportions of a shoe-box hall, the sound-scattering columns, the decorated ceiling). Further, the Wagner drama needed the invention of a specific space for the orchestra, acoustically coupled but separated for acoustic and visual reasons from the audience [1]: the “mystic gulf”. It is worth analysing the acoustics of Festspielhaus from several points of view: listener’s percep- tion of both vocal source on the stage and orchestral source in the mystic gulf; singer’s perception of him/herself on the stage and of the orchestra in the pit; musician’s perception in the relatively small volume of the pit coupled to the bigger volume of the audience. Due to this complexity, one of the the aims of the present investigation was to enrich the findings of the previous researches [2, 3, 4] using the latest approaches. The listeners’ placement in the graded amphitheatre provides a different acoustic experience of operas compared to the one in a typical Italian opera house. In an Italian theatre there are well separated places (boxes, stalls, and gallery), in the past corresponding to different social classes, ICSV22, Florence, Italy, 12-16 July 2015 1