Denmark - Robe moving lights – Esprites, Spiiders, iSpiiders and iForte LTXs used as followspots – all had impact on the lighting and set designed by Simon Corder for Opera Hedeland’s La fanciulla del West (Girl of the Golden West) by Puccini, which is set in a Gold Rush prospecting town in 19th century western USA.
Opera Hedeland offers Denmark's largest permanent outdoor stage, and an elegant 3,000-capacity amphitheatre sculpted into the landscape, a haven for opera lovers with open minds where they can imbibe an extraordinary site-specific experience each year with a series of special performances. The beauty of the former gravel quarrying area – now returned to natural heathland and forests – permeates the venue which nestles amidst a 15sq.k recreational area, approximately 20km out of the central Copenhagen hustle.
This is the third time Corder has designed shows at the location following the 2018 and 2022 seasons. As a designer who engages in a lot of site-specific work, he was delighted to be asked to light the 2024 production and to work again – after 2022 – with Copenhagen-based lighting rental company ETP who supplied all the lights.
ETP has a large Robe inventory and has invested steadily in the brand in recent years, and enjoys an ongoing relationship with Robe’s Danish distributor, Light Partner.
The major new Robe element this year was the iForte LTX. These high CRI luminaires replaced the four classic 4K FOH followspots of previous years, stationed equidistantly around the top of the amphitheatre seating terraces.
“The flat field is excellent, as is the CRI, the zoom is also impressive and there’s plenty of punch,” Corder stated.
As the Opera Hedeland summer shows are staged over a couple of weeks, it’s also convenient to leave the IP65-rated iForte LTXs on their vertical truss towers and out for the duration of the event, rather than having to de-rig and pack them away after each show.
The four RoboSpot base stations were located in a backstage portacabin and were operated by local crew who learned the process quickly.
Most of the iForte LTX FS parameters were controlled via the lighting console, so the operators could concentrate fully on the following.
The 12 x Esprites were rigged six-a-side on two elegant 10m-high industrial style steel towers that are part of the site’s permanent technical facilities, left and right of the stage, and these were the only elevated lighting positions near the stage. They were joined by six iSpiider wash beam fixtures a side on the same towers that this year replaced a cluster of PARs in the past.
These luminaires, plus another set of three iSpiiders on a tower stage right, all worked hard lighting the action, specials, set washing and scenic lighting.
Around the arena, 12 standard Robe Spiiders were positioned, housed in special boxes for weather protection and aesthetics.
Corder finds Spiiders an ultimately useful fixture. Referencing their positioning in this show, he commented: “They offer the brightness and clarity of PARs plus all the additional features of an LED moving head fixture.” He thinks they are “extremely versatile and useful” and noted that they worked seamlessly in conjunction with the Esprites.
His approach to lighting La fanciulla del West was “almost architectural” in that the shape and space of the environment heavily influenced the show aesthetics and where devices could physically be rigged, while still maintaining the integrity and drama of this setting.
Corder loves site-specific projects for their uniqueness and atmospheric nature and is fully into “embracing the quality of the environment” in every way possible, while simultaneously taking the audience back to the crazy days of goldrush madness.
The main challenge with this production was time – which was short to produce a world-class show – coupled with the intricacies required in morphing from day to dusk to dark to full artificial lighting.
In the six years since his first Lucia di Lammermoor production at Hedeland in 2018, the largely conventional PAR can lighting rig has shifted to primarily moving lights and LEDs at great speed. “You can do so much more with the same hanging space, less lighting fixtures and electricity,” Corder notes, adding that – naturally – the lights have been an important facilitator to enable ideas and imagination to flow.
Corder worked closely with his programmer Henrik Christensen and chief LX Jens Damsager Hansen, both of whom he describes as “brilliant and excellent team players”.
La fanciulla del West was directed by Rodula Gaitanou, costumes were by Gøje Rostrop, with music by the Opera Hedelands Festivalorkester conducted by Carlo Goldstein.
