Light plays a central role across all three evenings of the event and the lighting system was supplied exclusively by Clay Paky. The light project was the creation of Renato Neri from Xenon with technical and artistic support by Andrea Mantovani. Xenon was also responsible for organizing and outfitting the stage.
The lighting system included 10 Stage Profile Plus SVs for front lighting, the general lighting and projection of shapes onto the Court House; 20 Super Scan Zooms for lateral beams, effects and back lighting; 12 Stage Light 300s for stage lighting, several Stage Zoom 1200s and Stage Color 1200s and 20 CP Colors for colouring the Court House's pilasters and the square's gardens.
In addition to supervising the artists' performances, Andrea Mantovani staged two light shows which opened and closed the evenings. He commented: "Unable to work directly on location in the days before the event, I prepared the exhibitions inside the show room at the Clay Paky premises. I used a selected variety of projectors to be used later for the performances in Piazza Dante. It was naturally a question of adapting this light design to the environmental parameters I would find later: the buildings, the spaces, including those occupied by the public. Some of the scenes which I had found particularly pleasing in the show room had a completely different impact outdoors: they were then revised and adapted, maintaining the original synchronization whenever possible."
Andrea Mantovani also supervised the light programming for the performance of the three evenings' separate events: the Kataklò dance company, the Gene Gnocchi show (with director Oreste Castagna's collaboration) and the Frank Sinatra tribute, of which he said: "I had prepared 12 light photographs to accompany different musical pieces: numerous multi-coloured scenarios with graphic effects projected onto the Court House in order to create a backdrop that was not overly intrusive."
Like every year, Notti di Luce was a high quality combination of art forms, and Clay Paky's projectors demonstrated their reliability and versatility for both live performance and architectural applications.
(Lee Baldock)
