Three Tenors in the Forbidden City

Pellowe explained that the Forbidden City concert presented some unusual challenges: "I have been involved with the Three Tenors concerts from the very first one in 1990, and with Pavarotti since 1985 - reckoning to have faced just about every eventuality in all those years! But China was different - not least because of the difficulties presented by the language and the sometimes limited local resources. We are used to working with one major local sound supplier, which just was not feasible in China, and this did present us with some interesting issues. We knew that we would be using CCTVs [the Chinese broadcaster] J-Type, which was good news from the audio quality perspective and the ability to handle the whole show on just the one desk. But when we got our first look at it, our hearts literally sank, because it was black in colour, with not a trace of the customary Cadac gold to be seen! It had clearly been through some tough times, and we had concerns as to how it would perform. We needn't have worried, of course - being a Cadac, the electronics below the surface worked flawlessly and despite its looks, it sounded great. It's a real tribute to Cadac's engineering. We had terrific support from everyone at CCTV: they spared no expense - if we needed something, they simply went away and got it - and Cadac's local distributor, Hiroshi Systems, worked tirelessly to help us. A real bonus was being able to use CCTV's brand new power distribution system - with such a long site, we were worried about the possibility of contending with hum, but it was not an issue at all."