Towards Italian Opera Houses: A Review of Acoustic Design in Pre-Sabine Scholars

The foundation of architectural acoustics as an independent science is generally referred to Sabine’s early studies and their application. Nevertheless, since the 16th Century, a great number of authors wrote essays and treatises on the design of acoustic spaces, with a growing attention to the newborn typology of the Opera house, whose evolution is strongly connected to the cultural background of the Italian peninsula. With roots in the Renaissance rediscovery of Vitruvius’s treatise and his acoustic theory, 16th- to 19th-Century Italian authors tackled several issues concerning the construction of theatres—among them, architectural and structural features, the choice of the materials, the social meanings of performances. Thanks to this literature, the consolidation of this body of knowledge led to a standardisation of the forms of the Italian Opera house throughout the 19th Century. Therefore, the scope of this review paper is to focus on the treatises, essays and publications regarding theatre design, written by pre-Sabinian Italian scholars. The analysis of such literature aims at highlighting the consistencies in some 19th-Century minor Italian Opera houses, in order to understand to what extent this scientific and experimental background was part of the building tradition during the golden age of the Italian Oper

A trial acoustic improvement in a lecture hall with MPP sound absorbers and FDTD acoustic simulations

Sound absorbing micro-perforated panels (MPPs) are being increasingly used because of their high quality in terms of hygiene, sustainability and durability. The present work investigates the feasibility and the performance of MPPs when used as an acoustic treatment in lecture rooms. With this purpose, three different micro-perforated steel specimens were first designed following existing predictive models and then physically manufactured through 3D additive metal printing. The specimens\u2019 acoustic behavior was analyzed with experimental measurements in single-layer and double-layer configurations. Then, the investigation was focused on the application of double-layer MPPs to the ceiling of an existing university lecture hall to enhance speech intelligibility. Numerical simulations were carried out using a full-spectrum wave-based method: a finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) code was chosen to better handle time-dependent signals as the verbal communication. The present work proposes a workflow to explore the suitability of a specific material to speech requirements. The measured specific impedance complex values allowed to derive the input data referred to MPPs in FDTD simulations. The outcomes of the process show the influence of the acoustic treatment in terms of reverberation time (T30 ) and sound clarity (C50 ). A systematic comparison with a standard geometrical acoustic (GA) technique is reported as well

Italian-Style Opera Houses: A Historical Review

Attending an opera involves a multi-sensory evaluation (acoustical, visual, and more), cultural background and other emotional parameters. The present work aims to investigate the historical development of Italian-style opera houses, from the 16th century until today. Called “Italian” due to their origin, they developed thanks to the mutual influence of the genre and the building characteristics. Furthermore, the acoustics of historical opera houses is now considered as intangible cultural heritage, so it should be known and preserved. The paper addressed the state-of-the-art literature—most of which was proposed in Italian—which can be driven easily by the sharing of historical and contemporary knowledge