Running from February into early March, it was public demand which brought the return of Bizet's opera for a limited season of just 12 performances. Directed by David Freeman, it was again performed in the round, on a spectacular swirl-shaped ramp and circular pit designed by David Roger. Lighting design for both runs of Carmen was by Andrew Bridge, but this time with PRG Europe supplying a range of Vari-Lite fixtures from its extensive inventory to light the show, along with over 100 conventional lights and 40 colour scrollers.
Bridge's original design was inspired by the model photos he was given of the proposed production, before the original 2002 production: "The model photos included the angle poises that lit it with very obvious large directional looks," he said. "This triggered me to design four large clusters of moving light 'angle poises', located north, south, east and west, plus one overhead. In fact, other than a sprinkling from the Albert Hall balcony, that is all that lit the entire production."
Bridge's continuing use of Vari-Lite fixtures was based very much on practicality. The open nature of the Carmen set and drama of its story meant that lighting was the most important scenic element. Bridge highlighted the action areas in light tints, with the peripheral surrounds in saturates. This made high quality colour cross fading a key requirement, something which threw up its own challenges.
While the lighting design is basically the same as the 2002 production, the original rig comprised 10 VL6 and two VL2416Bs in each angle poise cluster. With these no longer available, this time VL2404s and VL3000s were used in each cluster, together with VL1000s, VL2000s and conventional fixtures. Therefore colour matching of the new fixtures to that of the originals was a key aspect of the rig's preparation. Andrew also chose the latest VL fixtures because of their quietness: "I was very concerned about the noise of intelligent fixtures during an opera and impressed at the quietness of the VL2404s and VL3000," he said.
Another major factor was time. The production's tight schedule meant that the load-in was on the Sunday, the rig focused on Monday morning, cast rehearsal on Monday afternoon and full dress rehearsals for the two casts on the Wednesday, ready for the show to open on Thursday. "Putting a full-scale opera into a venue like the Royal Albert Hall is a major challenge, so the PRG Europe crew, headed up by crew chief Nick Jones, put in a massive amount of work at the pre-production stage," said PRG Europe's account director, Peter Marshall. "Each part of the lighting rig was pre-assembled, which meant we could effect a quick and smooth load in. It's only by doing so much pre-production work that we could work to such a tight schedule and it all went extremely smoothly."
Because of the time constraints, Andrew Bridge elected to split control of the conventionals and Vari-Lites, the former being via an ETC Obsession 2 console and the latter a Wholehog 2. "It could easily be run on one board, but this way I could focus the lights quickly while my programmer was working with the movers," he said. "This was the 10th Raymond Gubbay production we've collaborated on in nine years," added Peter Marshall. "And we were very happy to continue that long standing relationship."
(Lee Baldock)
