“Viva Elvis” portrays the life of the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll” with his songs, including his Tupelo, MS boyhood, Army enlistment, movie career, marriage to Priscilla and Vegas comeback, running them all through Cirque du Soleil’s psychedelic blender that includes the requisite acrobatics and more dancing than usual for a Cirque show.
The usual pre-show antics are replaced by a couple dozen bobby-soxers who mingle and flirt with the audience before a gold-record curtain “pops the clutch” with a dramatic kabuki drop.
The show is conceived as a live concert, with live band and (except one) singers presenting a trip down memory lane and showing how Presley’s life and music came to be embedded in our cultural psyche.
Obviously Elvis’ voice isn’t live, but music director and arranger Erich von Tourneau listened to thousands of hours of recordings from more than 900 albums, bootlegs, films, and concert recordings to find the voices of Elvis to be remastered for the 30 tunes, which have also been re-arranged with a modern feel.
“Jailhouse Rock,” “Burning Love,” and of course, “Viva Las Vegas” are a few of the exuberant show-stoppers. The 1,840-seat Elvis Theatre in City Center’s Aria Resort and Casino has a generous stadium rake, with the audio mix position in the center where it belongs.
The plush seats all have cup-holders, and the center of the lower sections has ‘banquet sofas’ that seat four or six as a Las Vegas reference to showroom booths of yore.
Good Luck Charm
“Viva Elvis” sound was designed by Jonathan Deans, whose Broadway credits include a 2010 Tony nomination for “La Cage aux Folles,” “Young Frankenstein,” “Pirate Queen,” “Ragtime,” “Fosse,” and soon Bono and The Edge’s Spider-Man musical, to name just a few. He’s ssisted by Associate Sound Designer Jason Rauhoff.
This is the 13th Cirque show for Deans, as well as his seventh resident show on the Las Vegas strip, most of which are characterized by Meyer Sound Level Control Systems (LCS) Matrix3 mixing systems and Meyer Sound loudspeakers. However, this his first all-digital design, with an Optocore digital signal path.
“Meyer speakers have become my first choice due to several reasons. One being the quality control of their products,” Deans comments.
“Of course it also helps that all of their products are fantastic sounding and the voicing of each product line makes it possible for me to do my kind of work with an assortment of speakers that are sized for their installed location.”
“One other thing which is very unique for a company of Meyer’s size is the customer support and service, which is totally unbelievable and allows me to sleep at night.”
We were given a backstage tour by Assistant Head of Sound Aaron Beck, who has been involved, literally from the ground-floor, as Sound Project Manager.
Beck worked closely with Bob Barbagello and Mario St. Onge from installer Solotech, and SVC consulting firm Auerbach Pollock Friedlander’s Matthew Ezold, CTS.
Beck and Head of Sound Kevin Owens trade off mixing the show. Additional sound operations crew includes Monitor Mixer Dave Robertson and RF Tech Whitney Day, along with deck audio by John Kessler, Jason Bauer and Ezra Fowler.
