In Hampshire, Nothington Grange provides the home to Grange Park Opera, performed in a 540-seat horseshoe auditorium built within the listed out-house of the Grange. Lighting designer Chris Davey returned for his fourth season as resident LD, this year designing Maria Stuarda, Don Giovanni and South Pacific. As he notes: "each season the designs get bigger, pushing the stage and its possibilities to the limit. The operas rotate performances so virtually every day there is a complete set and lighting turnaround; my task was to light each piece on its own terms yet provide a design and rig that would be realistic, allowing the house to open by 5pm each day and without serious damage to the lighting team!" That team included Jon Clarke as head of lighting along with Heidi Riley, Andy Turner and John Mann.
Also factored in to the design process was the need for the rig to be versatile and quiet. "I have always been a big fan of 2.5K PC lens Pirouettes, which are fantastic as refocusable specials or opened out as wash lamps," Davey explained. "This year White Light's Dave Isherwood suggested a new alternative, the Clay Paky Alpha Wash Halo. It is a bright, accurate, colour mixing, variable-beam unit and a real alternative to my beloved Pirouette. When small the beam has a PC quality and its colour mixing was very sensitive in the 201 area but also provided punchy saturated colours." Davey's rig used four of the Alpha Wash Halos, complemented by Vari-Lite VL1000s and VL3000s in a season which Davey describes as "pushing everyone to their limits - but with the results making it worth it."
In Oxfordshire, Garsington Manor plays host to Garsington Opera, staged in a 400-seat temporary auditorium created on the manor's terrace, with the stage part-covered but open to the gardens beyond - meaning that Garsington's regular lighting designer, Bruno Poet, has long been seeking a bright source to compete with the setting sun but, again, with the requirement for low noise. This year White Light North supplied four Vari-Lite VL3500Qs as the main front-of-house lighting, providing a low-noise, bright, versatile solution to the problem. Working with Poet, production electrician Darren Male and programmer Vic Smerdon, White Light North's Jack Thompson also supplied the complete rig, control from Strand 500-series consoles as well as foldback, backstage calls, show relay across the site and a live video feed to a 32" colour monitor in the latecomers bar.
(Sarah Rushton-Read)
