Following on from the resounding success of its production of The Flying Dutchman in summer 2017, Theater Regensburg has once again pushed the boundaries of open-air opera with its latest offering – a version of Puccini’s semi-staged concert performance in three acts, Tosca.
Like its predecessor, the event was held at the West Port of the bayernhafen business park; a huge freight traffic hub in the East Bavarian town of Regensburg. The stage was situated on the historical Municipal Warehouse side, while the audience of nearly 3,000 was seated opposite on the North Quay. The side of the warehouse itself served as a gigantic projection surface, upon which a variety of striking visuals were beamed, courtesy of Digital Projection TITAN Laser projectors.
“The video aspect was the main part of the show,” said video operator, Wolfgang Frauendienst. “The actors and their audience were around 100m apart, so we needed a projector that could provide as much brightness as possible over a long distance. We decided to use 4 x TITAN Laser projectors arranged in two stacks of two, with each stack covering one half of the building.”
The Titan Laser 37000 delivers up to 37,000 (WUXGA) or up to 31,000 (4K-UHD) Lumens from a relatively compact chassis, making it the ideal projector for the most demanding of large-venue applications.
“Where bright, pin sharp images are required there should be no compromise,” said Digital Projection’s vice president of global marketing, Mark Wadsworth. “The TITAN Laser utilises the very latest in connectivity, including DisplayPort, HDMI 2.0 and HDBaseT. The advanced electronics also bring HDR processing to the large venue class of projectors, and features such as Constant Brightness Control and DMX Art-Net compatibility make it the ideal solution for high profile events such as this.”
The projectors were provided by Digital Projection distributor Etha, while the rest of the video equipment came from local company, fingerprint production.
Frauendienst added: “The content was played out with MadMapper software, going over two HDBaseT links to the two projector stacks. The live content was cut using a Blackmagic Design switcher and routed to the content PC over SDI. The whole network was consolidated into 10 lines of fibre, measuring over a kilometre, to allow the sound, lighting, video and five cameras to talk to one another.”
The video content, which included three-dimensional interiors of cathedrals and torture chambers, was handled by Clemens Rudolph, while Matthias Beck was in charge of cutting the live cameras. This footage was then mapped into Rudolph’s pre-rendered content.
As with any project of this scale, the video team encountered a handful of challenges during pre-production, though none of them were substantial enough to derail what turned out to be a stellar evening’s entertainment.
“The show was a great success,” Frauendienst concluded. “The feedback from the press and the audience has been great, and I think the crew enjoyed working on it because it was such an unusual event.”
Photo credit: Christina Iberl