ABSTRACT:
The theatres of Antiquity, Greek and Roman, constitute public buildings of the utmost
importance in the history of Western culture and in universal cultural heritage. Many of
these spaces are being used for their original function with or without only minor
adaptations. If they are well preserved and/or restored, these performance buildings attract
large audiences to representations of classical and contemporary plays, thereby serving the
purpose for which they were built in the Ancient Age. These theatres bear witness to the
existing relationship between architectural work, visual and acoustic experience, and
dramatic art. Although the majority are located in the Mediterranean region, these
structures were also built in the major cities of the ancient world in Europe, the Middle
East, northern Africa, and beyond. This paper aims to summarise and critically review
research published in the literature regarding their acoustic aspects, with particular
emphasis on Roman theatres. These pieces of research emphasize the importance of the
diffraction of sound in the tiers of the cavea and the good intelligibility for speech of
the Greco-Roman theatre.
"Acoustics of performance buildings in Hispania: The Roman
Theatre and Amphitheatre of Segobriga, Spain", M. Galindo,
S. Girn and R. Cebrin.
Publication: Applied Acoustics Vol
166,
107373 pp 1-15, (2020).
ABSTRACT:
In Roman times, Segobriga (Cuenca) was the capital of the Celtiberia region. The specular
gypsum of its mines, used as glass in windows, was exported across the whole Roman Empire
through the port of Carthago Nova (Cartagena), which made Segobriga a major centre of
commerce with the Mediterranean. The construction of the two performance buildings took
place outside the urban wall of the city and must have begun in the time of Tiberius; they
were inaugurated around 79 AD under Vespasian. The Roman theatre has one of the best
conserved cavea in Hispania, although it lacks a scaenae frons. In the amphitheatre, only
its southern cavea has been restored to accommodate the audience. In this work, experimental
results and analyses are presented of impulse responses and of the values of the monaural
and binaural acoustic parameters recorded in situ in these two performance buildings of this
imperial city of Hispania. These results correspond to the source-receiver combinations of
three positions of the sound source, in the places where the natural sources are located in
each building with multiple positions of the microphones. Analyses of the room impulse
response signals in the two venues are carried out, as is a study of focalization in the
amphitheatre together with a comparison of the acoustics of the two sites in terms of
temporal, energy, and spatial acoustic parameters. These buildings feature as study cases of
a wider research project that aims to evaluate and revalue the acoustics of the principal
Roman theatres of Spain.