The edgy new opera for young people was the latest initiative from Glyndebourne Education. It placed youth and the community centre stage in a new commission from Glyndebourne's first composer-in-residence, Julian Philips, and award-winning author, Nicky Singer. A cast of 100 young people joined Glyndebourne's professional team of singers, musicians and artists to perform the opera on three nights last week on the main stage at the famous Sussex, UK, Opera House.
It was the first time that a Catalyst system has been used at Glyndebourne, and for SNP Productions Simon Pugsley, the show represented a 'full circle' moment in his career .... harking back to 1994 when he received his first 'break' there.
"I'm very proud to have supplied Glyndebourne with a complete projection package and its first Catalyst system for Knight Crew," Pugsley states.
Knight Crew's projection system was specified by Finn Ross, who also created all the special content that ran during the show. The stunning set was designed by Es Devlin, complimented with moody lighting by Bruno Poet and direction by John Fulljames.
The Catalyst servers each included a Matrox Triple-Head-2-Go, offering three outputs to three projectors and a programming screen. Each output has a distribution amplifier allowing for local monitoring and connection to the projector. The servers were situated just off-stage, with a KVM extender supplied to allow the programming and operation to be done from the FOH position.
SNP also supplied a Hog iPC for programming and two Artistic Licence Datalynx units for ArtNet distribution between the Catalyst and the three Barco CLM R10+ projectors, which were supplied, complete with lenses and DVI fibre links. In total the two servers provided six projection outputs - all housed in one of SNP's custom Catalyst System flightcases.
Ross was asked aboard the project by Fulljames with whom he has worked before, and this was their second show together. He was given a brief to produce the content which involved a lot of underwater footage, filmed in a tank in Clapham. There was also plenty of footage of the cast members fighting one another, and he had to create a new alphabet based on graffiti plus some other off-beat graphics which provided an exciting challenge.
Finn also made the decision to hire the projection system from SNP and describes the service from the Milton Keynes based company as "excellent and highly knowledgeable".
The other Catalyst was dedicated to one - seminally important - cue which was achieved using three small projectors ensconced in the footlights trough. These projected footage of children onto the t-shirts of the mothers' chorus, who were lined up along the front of the stage singing an aria.
This effect consumed 15 layers on the Catalyst, and having a machine specially dedicated to it was the easiest way of achieving exactly what was wanted.
(Jim Evans)
