TonyV
Senior Member
I saw The Marriage of Figaro on Sunday from our new seats in the last row of Ring 4, centre. (TonyV, the new seats thing is a long story - last season we were here, there, everywhere.)
Regarding the 'on fire' acoustics - we had loved them everywhere we'd been in the hall so far, until Sunday. The vocals were still fine actually*, but we felt the orchestra sounded muffled where we were. Maybe it was just Julia Jones keeping the lid on them however - I suppose we'll have Don Carlos to compare the sound again this coming Sunday. If it's still muffled, then the jury will declare that the last row is too far under the overhang, or some such thing...
42
*Direct line of sight from our seats to the stage of course, but the front half of the orchestra were hidden from our view - so that may be what's muffling the orchestra's sound somewhat.
Don't know about the Mozart, but during Ring Cycle last year, I sat in the parterre (side of main level) and for one scene swapped seats with a friend who was in last row ring 3. Acoustics do vary. At the sides, the high frequencies seem to collect, whilst at the back, the sound was more base-ish. My friend and I agreed that both locations had good sound, but different. I prefer the high frequencies in general.