carmen - lighting & sound america · carmen sign, walkway platforms, staircases, and a...

40 • July 2013 • Lighting&Sound America

OPERA

on the WaterfrontCarmen

Copyright Lighting&Sound America July 2013 http://www.lightingandsoundamerica.com/LSA.html

armen, the heroine of GeorgesBizet’s opera, is known forturning heads in the streets ofSeville. More recently, shecaused something of a sensation

in Australia’s Sydney Harbour. A production of an OperaAustralia program known as Handa Opera on SydneyHarbour, named after its Japanese benefactor, an outdoorwaterside staging of Carmen in March earned anavalanche of publicity and acclaim. “Opera on SydneyHarbour was a resounding triumph. Its future as one ofSydney’s landmark events must surely be assured,” saidthe newspaper The Australian. The Sydney Morning Heraldadded, “Last year, Opera Australia’s first outdoorproduction [of La Traviata] at Farm Cove’s water’s edgeseemed bold, quixotic, decadent, and of doubtful sustain-ability ... With this year’s production, equally successful asspectacle, and, more surprisingly, as opera, the logic andhistorical continuity of such a celebration of place throughperformance became apparent.”

Still, the question needs answering: Why put on aspectacular opera production outdoors on the harbor ofone of the world’s great cities, especially one with a world-famous opera house? Brian Thomson, set designer ofCarmen, says, “Opera Australia, under the direction ofLyndon Terracini, wants to break out of the mold of operabeing a museum theatre form. He’s trying to do popularoperas in a different context. Last year, we did La Traviatain the harbor, staged by Francesca Zambello.” (GaleEdwards directed Carmen.) He points out that already theconcept has become “a late summer event,” adding that“60% of the audience hasn’t been to an opera before.”

Thomson says that the venue chosen for Carmen (andLa Traviata) is normally the site of an outdoor cinema. Toaccommodate the stage and scenery, he says, “We sunkpylons into the base of the harbor and planted a bigscaffold structure on top; we built the set on top of that.The structure incorporates the orchestra, dressing rooms,and prop storage, which is why the stage is on a massive1:10 rake.” The set, he adds, “was set back from theharbor wall about 20'. There’s a stone wall at the edge ofthe harbor, with a walkway that goes around the city’sbotanical gardens. We have to leave the walkway open forjoggers during the day.” The total area covers 205,000 sq.

ft. and accommodates 3,000 spectators on a grandstandthat weighs approximately 60 tons. The stage’s dimen-sions are 105' by 80'; it weighs approximately 40 tons. The16 pylons supporting the stage, the accompanying lightingand sound goalposts, and the floating walkway weighapproximately 12 tons.

Thomson’s designs for this venue rely on big, eye-grabbing visual concepts. La Traviata rather famously wasdominated by an enormous chandelier made of Swarovskicrystals. The designer says, “Gale came up with the ideaof doing the La Dolce Vita version of Carmen,” an allusionto the famous Federico Fellini film, indicating a mid-20th-century time frame, a certain emphasis on chic and boldlysexual costumes, and a sense of creeping modernity.

Noting that Sydney city laws don’t permit advertising atthis particular site, Thomson says, “This was an oppor-tunity to put up a big, Hollywood-style billboard,” aconcept that allowed him to reveal “the show behind thebillboard, if you will, to look behind the glamour.” Thus, theupstage edge of the stage featured the name of the operaspelled out in 30'-tall letters. The sign faced out, so theaudience saw the title in reverse. “The side of the billboardfacing the audience was outlined in regular light bulbs; theother side was lit with Molefay blinders,” notes Thomson.

The design process was complex, Thomson adds. “Istarted last year; it’s a lengthy procedure, given thebudgeting and dealing with costumes [designed by JulieLynch]. The set was built and painted at ShowTrek inAdelaide, which is two hours away by plane. Also, thereare various events at the venue; the open-air cinema getstaken away, but there was a Mardi Gras party there abouta month before we opened and a triathlon. We had towork around them. Our schedule, which was incrediblyfast, consisted of a two-week build period and two weeksof tech.” He adds, “The cast performs in light rain if they

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A stunning outdoor production calls for bold design and technical innovationsBy: David Barbour

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have to, and the first dress rehearsal was extremely windy.The scene with all the flags looked wonderful.”

A statement from ShowTrek describes the job: “Thebillboard is the most visible feature, with the [30']-highCarmen sign, walkway platforms, staircases, and a structurethat extends several meters below the stage to thefoundation platform just above the water level. The billboardlettering is bordered by two rows of red light globes, andthe billboard also supports a massive illuminated outline ofa bull.” The latter detail, Thomson adds, is taken from thelogo of a brand of sherry that was once popular in Spainand is now seen everywhere in the country as a form of 3-Dgraffiti. “The bull is outlined with rope light,” says Thomson.“I learned all about rope light, having designed the NewYear’s Eve Harbour Bridge Effect for six years;” one of hisdesigns was a 350'-long coat hanger using rope light.

Also, according to ShowTrek, “The stage itself is steeplyraked with a semi-circular extension at the downstageedge to give the impression of a bullfighting ring. A 75'-diameter light ring is incorporated into the stage and usedthroughout the performance to emphasize the metaphor ofthe bull fight. [Thomson says it consisted of rope lightcovered in Perspex. John Rayment, Carmen’s lightingdesigner, says there were three circuits of rope light on50mm centers.] A 26'-by-10' central lift has a dual purpose,opening down to provide a ramp from the sub-stage areaand lifting upward to form a raised stage platform.”

Other key scenic elements included two cranes at leftand right, which were used to deliver a trunk and tank atthe beginning of the opera, and, later, a cargo container fora hideout scene. A car containing Escamillo, the toreadorwho falls for Carmen, drives along the jogger’s path. “Hearrives in the second act, set at the café, in a restored 1949Bentley convertible,” says Thomson, naming a vehicle thatwould very likely have been chosen by a celebrity in late-‘50s Spain. There was no shortage of memorableentrances; Thomson, who says that, for La Traviata, certaincharacters arrived via water taxi, adds that Escamillo’sarrival was accompanied by fireworks shooting off the topof the Carmen sign. Later, in Act IV, when the toreadorappeared on his way to the arena, he was delivered to thestage in a cage that passed through the horns of the illumi-nated bull. Also, he notes, “The ramp in the center of thedeck hinged down, allowing for mass entrances, like that ofthe cigarette girls. During the final scene, a fiberglass bullappeared on the ramp. And Carmen arrived at the base ofthe stage in a limousine; it was tricky to navigate the rampin her giant dress; I wouldn’t want to do it. If you tumble offthe front of the stage, you’re in the harbor.”

All of this, of course, posed quite a challenge for thecast. “It’s all very well for us to have these smart ideas,”says Thomson, laughing. “They do find it to be a bit of ashock at first. All of them have done Carmen in operahouses around the world, but a proscenium-arch

performance doesn’t work. It has to be bigger, and it takesthem a little while to adjust to the space. For the finalscene, set in the bullring, all of the members of the chorusclimbed up on the set’s scaffold, looking through theCarmen sign as if the bullfight were happening beyond it.We had 50 or 60 people standing on the scaffold.”

For everyone, the pace of production was fast andfurious. “You cannot be fussy,” says Thomson. “Rehearsalsare short. We have to rehearse two principal casts, whichchops our time in half. A lot of detail stuff that Galeplanned to do went out the window.” However, he says hefeels nothing was lost as a result. “The music is so thrillingand, altogether, it is a fabulous event. When the momentarrives that Escamillo has landed, and the fireworks go off,the audience goes wild.”

Despite the many logistical challenges, Thomson, whosecareer includes the 1996 Broadway revival The King and I(for which he won a Tony Award); the original London andAustralian productions of The Rocky Horror Show andJesus Christ Superstar; the Australian, London, andBroadway companies of Priscilla Queen of the Desert; theopening ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games;and operas for Welsh National Opera, English NationalOpera, and Royal Opera London, seems delighted by it all.“It’s the best location on earth, especially with the view youget of Sydney Opera House,” he says.

LightingRed hues dominated John Rayment’s lighting designs,inflaming the opera’s combustible mix of passion, violence,and murder. Edwards’ staging achieved dramatic balancebetween the opera’s public and private moments, and thelighting ranged from boldly saturated colors to cool, almostclinical, white light looks and from carefully carved intimatetableaux to wide-angle stage washes. “I always think—particularly when you’ve got a large empty space as youoften have in dance—that it’s my job to provide a variety ofvisual and emotional responses to the space,” saysRayment. “Brian is a master of providing a great canvas, andthere are times when you want the artificiality and theatri-cality and times when you want to draw the audience in.”

Rayment, who also lit La Traviata, says Edwards “turnedme loose in the sense there’s a lot to be found as you goalong the process; that’s the nature of this beast. Some ofthe best-laid plans can come undone as you get closer toopening and confront the challenges of cast capacity orother issues that arrive at the last minute. You can set out astylistic overview, which is largely determined by the discus-sions of the settings and costumes, but the nature of thelighting in this situation is relatively limited to front-of-housepositions and crosslight. I also knew the production wouldhave a substantial choreographic content.”

Therefore, Rayment says, “My main firepower came fromtwo goalposts, [105']-wide horizontal trusses, roughly about


OPERA


The outline of the bull is taken from advertisements for Brandy de Jerez, a popular brand of Spanish sherry, now regarded as an unof-ficial national symbol of Spain.

One of Rayment’s powerful saturated color looks. The side of the billboard facing the audience was outlined in regular light bulbs.

[49]' either side of the center line. Each one has two levels:one level of [Martin Professional] MAC III Performances andanother of [Philips Vari*Lite] VL3500s.” The upstage end ofthe goalposts lined up with the cranes located at theupstage outer corners of the stage.

Rayment’s lighting rig depends on a small number ofunits of varying brands. He likes mixing and matchinglighting units from various companies, “They all have theiridiosyncrasies and qualities,” he notes. Speaking of theMac IIIs, he says, “I like the clarity of the light source andthe big side throw; it’s shaped like an ellipse when it hits

the stage. Also, when you have a stage that is some [98']wide, if you use patterns, it’s like a long image beingstretched through a keystone; the Mac IIIs are able to holda gobo focus across that keystone. They’re also verypunchy.” The VL3500s were chosen in part for theirshuttering capabilities, and he says the Clay Paky Alpha1500s placed in the front position were useful because oftheir ability to produce a very narrow beam. Altogether,124 automated lighting units were used. Much of theproduction’s backlighting came from the Molefays andVL3500 Wash lights on the crane verticals. ETC Source

OPERA


Perspex covered the 75'-diameter light ring made of rope light.

Red hues were prominent in Rayment’s lighting design, reflecting Carmen’s combustible mix of passion, violence, and murder.

The letters facing the harbor were nearly 30' tall.


Fours were used as downlights for the variousperformance levels on the sign on the reverse Carmensign. These conventional units were important, Raymentadds, because their warm tungsten light was in keepingwith the production’s 1950s time frame. (The rig consistedof 28 Mac III Performances, 40 VL3500 Spots, 16 VL3500Washes, nine Molefay six-lights, 27 Source Four PARs,four Panther search lights, six Lycian 1294 followspots,and 42 Alpha Spot 1500s, all supplied by ChameleonTouring Systems)

An MA Lighting grandMA1 console provided control.“There are those who like the grandMA2, but I leave thatchoice to my programmer,” Rayment says. Previsualizationwas a key part of the design process. “I’m a longtime userof WYSIWYG,” he says, adding that the opportunity towork in advance in a studio is necessary when any on-sitework is limited to nighttime hours in a restricted timeframe. “You work in broad strokes in the studio, and youdevelop a language with your programmer.”

Of course, the production had substantial powerrequirements, and power is very limited at the site. “Youdon’t want to go picnicking in the Botanical Gardens whilewe’re on,” says Rayment, wryly. “There’s a large instal-lation of generators there to serve our needs.” Hedescribes the time frame as “a total of six weeks from bareearth to opening night. According to the schedule, I was toget three nights to work, but things never work outaccording to schedule. You have crane drivers, two fullcasts, the oddity of doing technical rehearsals with thestage lights on—and the weather can’t be predicted; also,we were in the last dying throes of daylight savings timewhen we were setting it up. On a project like this, youbecome schooled in the art of the possible.”

Rayment, who has worked extensively for SydneyTheatre Company, Sydney Dance Company, and for variousopera companies, adds that Carmen posed a challenge thatwas very different from La Traviata. “We set out last year tomake a giant statement, creating images from an opera,with the opera house in the background. This year, Brian putthat large sign on the set, so your eye wasn’t drawn acrossthe water to the opera house. It’s more theatrical.” Still, headds, lighting “can pull it down and draw people inemotionally; the challenge is to tie it all together.”

SoundLike Thomson and Rayment, Tony David Cray, Carmen’ssound designer, also worked on La Traviata, so he wasaware of the challenges. “Like most set designers, Briandoesn’t want to see speakers,” he says, laughing. “Hedoesn’t mind a giant crane on stage, but he doesn’t wantto see speakers on his set. So we worked to minimize theimpact of the audio system.” (Cray is head of recordingand broadcast for the Sydney Opera House; he has also

worked with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and for suchartists as Burt Bacharach, Olivia Newton-John, Lou Reed,and The Cure.)

“On the harbor, the challenge is the very wide, yetshallow, orientation of the seating,” Cray says. “How doyou envelop an audience that is 197' wide sitting only afew meters from the harbor and pull them into the opera’semotional journey? For La Traviata, we used a more tradi-tional approach, with flown speaker arrays on goalpostson either side of the stage, [98'] on each side; we addedsmaller arrays clamped to the sides of the stage and alsodown front. It was quite a challenge to ensure goodcoverage whilst maintaining a strong focal point of thestage. The final result worked well, but I felt like we justgot away with it. Anyone in the know could see our sleightof hand.”

Directly addressing the issue of creating a natural sounddesign in open air, he says, “I was keen to use technologyfrom IOSONO, a German company that specializes in whatit calls audio spatialization.” The IOSONO system, Craysays, uses a mathematical model called wave fieldsynthesis to “create a 3-D hologram of sound.”

According to IOSONO’s website, “In the developmentfrom mono to stereo to surround, many different speakerlayouts for multichannel audio formats have beenproposed—5.1, 7.1, 9.1, 11.1, or 22.2 are just a fewexamples. The numbers of speakers have continuouslyincreased, but the limitations of multichannel formats haveremained unchanged. Surround reproduction relies on thelistener to be evenly spaced between the speakers for thefull effect to be heard. But moving outside this small area,the so-called ‘sweet spot,’ causes the illusion to collapse.A problem on the production side is that while content isproduced for specific formats, it is adapted to non-correctsetups during reproduction. Further, venue operators needto install a new system at every new development to playback reasonably.

“IOSONO’s unique approach to sound reproductioneffectively removes the speakers from the equation, repro-ducing individual sounds not just around the listener butinside the room, outside the room, and overhead in anydirection, placing acoustic objects accurately in three-dimensional space. IOSONO extends the channel-basedapproach with an object-based view. Information about theintended position and attributes of sound sources isembedded in the audio format, and additional metadataguarantees the support of optimization and adaptation ofthe content to all reproduction environments. A future-proof master is created, enabling IOSONO’s audioprocessor, the IPC 100, to adapt the audio to fit anyspeaker configuration regardless of room size or propor-tions and for every audience member. The technologybehind the creation of 3-D sound with IOSONO is based

on the principles of Wave Field Synthesis and was percep-tually optimized with several patented new methods forspatial audio reproduction developed by IOSONO.”

Cray says he first made use of IOSONO technologywith Opera Australia, “For a production of Die Tote Stadtstaged in the opera house, the conductor was adamantthat the orchestral numbers be as the composer intended,and this meant that the orchestra wouldn’t fit in the pit, sothe bold decision was to place the entire 100-pieceorchestra and 40-strong choir into another theatre at theopera house. Our challenge was to capture the orchestraand choir and relay it as naturally as possible to the Opera

Theatre, where the singers would stand on stage and singas usual. This was a very large undertaking and requiredcollaboration from a number of parties.

“With support from Shane Bailey at National Audio, wesourced the required d&b audiotechnik speakers, and RalfZuleeg, of d&b, introduced us to Stephan Mauer fromIOSONO. We were all blown away by the sense of tactilitythe final system provided. Using IOSONO, we were able torecreate the virtual positions of the orchestra in the pit,using a horizontal array of speakers at the front of thestage.” The resulting sound, he adds, was remarkablynatural. Not only did the music appear to come from thepit, it did so in a way that replicated the configuration ofthe orchestra in another room. “The effect that it creates isquite astounding,” Cray says. “It is immensely convincing,quite spooky, actually. When doing Die Tote Stadt, amusician in the other venue dropped a pencil, andeverybody in the room could point to where the virtualpencil was.” With the IOSONO system, “every person inthe theatre can share the same point source.

“Expanding on our experience of Die Tote Stadt, Iwanted to see how this technique could work on thechallenges of Carmen,” Cray says, “IOSONO allowed us tobreak the tradition of large line arrays firing at theaudience.” Noting that the audience was laid out in a wide


OPERA

L-Acoustics KUDOs were placed in front of the audience on thesea wall and on goal posts at stage left and right.

A map of the point sources for the IOSONO system.


configuration, he says, “We put a horizontal array [of 18 L-Acoustics KUDOs] in front of the audience on the sea walland used [the IOSONO system] to feed each array individ-ually. The IOSONO box has MADI in and out; the way it isdesigned, the outputs feed the speakers directly. Each ofthe Kudos was individually addressed and fed by IOSONOwith discrete sources that I wanted to control. I split theorchestra into ten discrete sources and laid them at therear of the stage, feeding, for example, the first violinsslight to center.” The IOSONO box recreated the spatiallayout of the sound on stage, convincing one that if theviolin section is atstage right, its soundcomes from there.

“This leads to thesecond tier of mychallenge,” Cray says.“Would we go thewhole way withIOSONO, or was Igoing to use it as aspeaker matrix? I didthe latter because thestyle of the productionis quite large and bold,and there wasn’t toomuch space for manysubtleties. So wewalked the linebetween realism andtelling a story.”

Given the largecast, one challengewas the number ofmicrophones needed.“We started with 46channels of radiomicrophones, whichwas as much as we could get away with safely,” Craysays, adding, “A naval base is right next door, and theyoften don’t play nicely in terms of RF frequencies.” Thesingers wore DPA 4060s with Shure and Sennheiser trans-mitters plus Shure in-ears; also used was a set of AKG747 shotgun mics.

The 45-piece orchestra was located under the stage inwhat Cray calls a “small, slightly soundproofed room.There’s a giant air-conditioning unit next to it. If the cast ismoving or dancing on stage, you can hear it. When itrains, the pit starts to leak. They had to move the tympaniwhile they were playing.” The instruments used mics fromSchoeps, Sennheiser, Neumman, Royer, DPA, and Shure.

For control, Cray says, “I used the [Avid VENUE] D-Show last year, and I’m used to mixing on a EuphonixSystem 5 console in the opera house. But, given the

complexity of the IOSONO system and my need to feed itmany discrete feeds, I required a console that had a lot offlexible routing, and the [DiGiCo] SD7 was within ourbudget. In the end, it was a good decision, as I used everychannel and every buss available.”

In Cray’s case, the foreshortened schedule was mostchallenging. “I went to the final two weeks of rehearsal,which is where I would program the console with hundredsof cues. Also in the final week of rehearsal, we put mics onsingers, to get them used to it, as well as 60 – 70 pairs ofin-ears. It’s a huge thing for an opera singer to confront

these. Once we got out into the harbor, we had 15 minuteswith the cast before they start singing in rehearsal. Withten principals and 20 in the chorus, that’s quite achallenge. Then when the orchestra arrived, I had tenminutes to make sure it didn’t sound terrible. We didn’t geta chance to breathe until opening night, which was fournights away.” He adds that the crew, assembled byNorwest, the sound gear supplier, was especially helpful.

Thomson says a production of Madame Butterfly is inthe cards for next year. Given the reception for Carmen,and, earlier, for La Traviata, everyone involved must befeeling the pressure to come up with another big success.Given their newfound expertise in outdoor opera, it’s likelythat the third time will be the charm.

Additional images of Carmen are available in LSA’s digitaledition at www.lightingandsoundamerica.com/LSA.html.

A map of the understage area, which housed the orchestra, dressing rooms, and prop storage.

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