09/07/2026
As our team puts the final touches on the setup for this year’s Opera in the Quarry - Tosca (15/07 - 22/08), one of Europe’s most beautiful open-air stages is transforming. Director Thaddeus Strassberger, costume designer Giuseppe Palella and musical director Valerio Galli are transporting audiences straight into Enlightenment-era Rome.
But a production this massive requires an equally grand sonic canvas. That’s where Amadeus Acoustics comes in.
Giacomo Puccini was, in many ways, a 19th-century pioneer of spatial audio 🔔🇮🇹
When writing Tosca, Puccini didn’t just want beautiful melodies; he wanted total audience immersion. He famously sat for days on the steps of the fountain in front of St. Peter's Basilica to map the exact pitch, distance, and 360-degree layout of Rome’s church bells ringing out into the morning mist.
Now, with the Opera in the Quarry located in St. Margarethen, Austria, Amadeus Acoustics has been handed the task of transporting the audience from the vast open-air quarry, hundreds of miles away, straight to a Roman piazza. This is a monumental challenge.
While our sound design team has perfected the historical audio of the bells, the Amadeus ART system is doing the heavy lifting of locating them in real-time. With our ART Immersive Sound and ART Active Acoustics solutions, the audience won't just hear the bells; they will feel exactly as Puccini intended, sitting right in the heart of Rome, with sound chiming accurately from the left, right, and deep background.
To bring this to life under the open sky, we’ve introduced some major behind-the-scenes upgrades for 2026. This season marks a double premiere at the quarry as we deploy our newly released ART::IP (Immersive Performance) module running on our ART::Director software, while smoothly integrating Zactrack to handle all performer tracking duties. This ensures the audio flawlessly pinpoints the performers wherever they step across the massive set.
We are incredibly proud to return for another magical season at Opera in the Quarry. Secure your tickets for Tosca, and experience the magic for yourself! www.operimsteinbruch.at
