I saw A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC with a 54 piece orchestra and a turntable.

Saw this production last May. Thought it was pretty great.
It uses, as aforementioned, a mammoth, mammoth turntable and row upon row of pastel green and blue gauze, translucent curtains. Very cinematic scene changes. You probably remember the details better than me but I thought it was very well directed.

Sung fantastically and great orchestrations, but mostly opera singers so the acting left a little bit to be desired. How did it fit into the Sydney Opera House? It's a pretty bland space inside.

Do you have any pictures of the production that include the set? I am very curious now to see how this looks!

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I know what you mean. I am a HUGE fan of full orchestras but find I'm usually let down if they're TOO big. My ideal would be the standard 20-25 member traditional Broadway orchestra. The sound is neither so big it swallows everything up nor so scrawny that it sounds like a whimper. It's just right.

Ultimately, how many players is not what really matters to me but the number of musicians should be proportional in relation to the space. Small, 5-member ensembles are lovely in 99 seat theatres but would probably not go over too well in a large auditorium with a large scale production and cast.

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But probably with an expanded string section.

The 'set' consisted of strategic pieces of all white furniture etc. which, through the use of the revolve and all the curtains were moved on and off, creating different locations. The Armfeldt mansion appeared at the upstage behind, at first, the transparent curtains. Occasional items (The theatre proscenium etc.) were simply flown in. While these items were all white, the curtains were all pinks and purples.

"It wasn't Sondheim and Wheeler's aspiration to create a Chekhov musical."

Maybe not in 1973. But now that Sondy takes his place alongside Chekhov and Ibsen in theatrical history (and deservedly so), have you heard him complain?

"I found Nunn's insistance..."

Absolute bollocks. Sondheim knew full well what was being done.

And I can still manage to spell insistence after a bottle of 15% Carmenere.

You don't need to spell it, just try drinking it.

With someone desirable.

No seduction technique necessary.

(Alta Tierra, 2007 Carmenere, Elqui Valley)

Madame Armfeldt would surely have it in her cellar.

"It wasn't Sondheim and Wheeler's aspiration to create a Chekhov musical."

From the chapter on ALNM in Hal Prince's book Contradictions: "We wanted to do a kind of Chekhovian musical."

http://thefoolandtheopera.blogspot.com/2009/05/fool-and-opera-reviewer-paul-williamson.html

(Not my review)

And here's another Hal Prince quote, this one from Sondheim & Co.:

"The whole time we worked on it in Boston, we didn't really think it was going to be that popular. I was really quite convinced that it couldn't be. Mostly because of the beginning . . . it takes its own good time to get started. Everyone kept saying, 'Why don't we get started sooner?' and I felt that if we did, we should never have done the play. I said it's Chekhov in style, let's stick to Chekhov and they've got to go with us. The only reason for doing it was we wanted to do this kind of musical. If we gave them a wham-bam opening number so that they felt comfortable, we would, in the long run, fail. And we stuck to our guns, and we were popular."

Let me just add that this doesn't mean I'm saying that Nunn's production is good. But the show is intentionally somewhat Chekhov-like in style.

Of course, Chekhov always insisted that this plays were comedies and got annoyed when Stanislavsky made his plays into tragedies full of weepy characters.