United States. Live opera returned to the San Francisco Bay Area this spring with a series of outdoor performances that meet the San Francisco Opera's Covid guide of "The Barber of Seville" with the help of Elation luminaries with IP-rate.
With Covid restrictions on indoor gatherings, the opera company secured the Marin Center Drive-in in San Rafael, where opera fans gathered in their cars to watch Rossini's classic.
Director Matthew Ozawa's 90-minute adaptation, in which singers return to the opera house after a pandemic to bring opera back to life, ran from April 23 to May 15. Guests could watch the performance from a live opera lot with a direct view of the performance or from a simulcast lot overlooking an entrance screen. The car capacity for each show was 300+.
Lighting equipment
The resident lighting director of the San Francisco Opera (SFO) is Justin Partier, while JAX Messenger, once on the SFO staff, served as lighting designer for the production of "The Barber." As the outdoor stage was also used on the days off for concerts by SFO resident artists, the Adler Fellows, the two designers, friends since working as associates on Broadway, made lighting decisions together.
Proteus Maximus
Barber's production and Adler's shows were held on a 120' wide festival stage erected on site for performances. Four sliding video screens were an integral part of the set with two additional large video screens on either side of the stage acting as IMAG. Messenger says Barber needed a bright light in motion, while the need to adapt to an outdoor venue and performances in rain or shine demanded the use of weatherproof lighting.
Elation's 50,000-lumens Proteus Maximus fit perfectly with 56 luminaires that worked from the FOH and onto the stage trusses, as well as from the audience towers where the launch to the stage platform was 90 feet. "From an artistic point of view I like brilliant things. I'd rather sit at the control table knowing that every signal has some teeth," Messenger says. "Maybe I'm getting old, but conventional teams don't seem like much to me anymore."
The first time he uses the Maximus, Partier confirms that the power of the device was key. "The intensity was really important," he said. "We were hoping to do a mobile light preset and focus during the day to keep up with the crazy opera schedule and while it wasn't always possible due to the bright California sun, we were able to do it a good chunk of the time in the indoor afternoons with the Maximus." He adds that brightness was also crucial for the IMAG video as some of the cars were far away.
Another reason behind the choice of the Proteus Maximus was its IP65 all-weather rating. "We needed the IP-rate, but it seemed like we weren't making concessions and that was great," Messenger says. "Everything I needed to do for Barber worked well and what Justin needed to do with the gigs also worked because we had such an intense level of flexibility."
Colour
In opera, according to Partier, high color rendering and color temperature adjustment are important, two features that the Maximus boasts and something he says they used a lot. Because interaction between singers was limited due to Covid restrictions, media content on video walls played a bigger role. Messenger knew it would have to coordinate or contrast color with media.
"I wanted the color variety and color rendering to be high because I wanted to be able to exaggerate when it was a moment of love and more when it was a moment of comedy," he explains. "The power and color of the Maximus gave us that flexibility and I was happy with the color we were able to achieve. They gave us some nice greens and nice golds, and they were very helpful."
With multiple LED luminaires in the specification plus two layers of live capture to deal with (live video embedded in the set architecture and live capture on a giant screen in the simulcast batch), the cinematographer had the added challenge of white balance, Messenger says, "but the fixtures worked."
"Sharp edges and good zoom were also important," Partier adds. "They were great for the interior scenes as front and fill light, as well as for the upper level backlight for the upper front spaces of the left and right stage."
SixBar Flexibility
Another workhorse light in the specification was 92 SixBar 1000 IP lights, Elation's six-color, meter-long LED ribbon, which was employed in a variety of ways. Partier explains: "They were the key light in all the rooms, mounted on the sides and at the top on the upper level, and along the top on the lower level. We also use two rows to illuminate the translucent panels on the lower level as two rows of floor. Some fixtures were mounted between the doors and the masking floors to illuminate the latter." The SixBars were also used as soft lights on stage to create an outdated front light source.
Other Elation equipment on the SFO drive-in platform included 33 Fuze PAR Z120 IP units as door backlight and running lights, while 26 DTW Blinder 350 IP ™ 2 lights and 20 DTW Blinder 700 IP 4 lights functioned as home and work lights. Felix Lighting's Brisbane office in Northern California supplied all the lighting. The lighting technicians and stagehands were all from IATSE Local 16.
A triumph
Opera's return to the San Francisco area, the Company's first live performances in 16 months, was a huge success with critics praising Ozawa's abbreviated adaptation of "the best of" and not least the effort to bring it under restrictive Covid guidelines.
"I think the show was a triumph," concludes Messenger, who said the project had a sense of excitement before opening night. "It was beautiful, the audience loved it, it was fun and everyone seemed to enjoy the approach we took, but the real triumph is in the administration of the OFS. They took on a long list of Covid challenges and made it work."
