The Vienna State Opera, which is also home to the Vienna State Ballet, has invested in ROBE FORTE LED moving lights and FORTE FollowSpots.
Signal Sound & Light Distribution delivers
The Vienna State Opera has purchased 10 FORTE units and 4 FORTE FollowSpots, which operate in conjunction with a customized RoboSpot system, explains Robert Eisenstein, Deputy Head of Lighting. The opera house runs a busy performance schedule in its impressive Renaissance Revival venue, which seats 1,709 and offers 567 standing places.
The ROBE fixtures – supplied by Austrian ROBE distributor Signal Sound & Light Distribution – replace the old, generic, manually focused FOH fixtures as well as traditional followspots with brighter, more flexible, and sustainable lighting. With a throw distance of 50 meters from the FOH positions to the stage, the most powerful and quietest fixtures available were required.
All other tested options were either too large, too loud, or not bright enough. While the FOH positions are not directly exposed to the audience, the ten fixtures are located in a partially enclosed area, which causes sound to reverberate throughout the entire venue. The HCF (High Color Fidelity) version of the FORTE’s LED engine was specifically chosen to achieve natural skin tones, excellent color rendering, and a wide range of tunable white temperatures.
The fact that the FOH fixtures no longer need to be manually focused saves valuable setup time between productions. Additionally, the system is much more flexible, allowing it to meet the needs of a wide variety of productions.
Human Operator Instead of Tracking System
Robert Eisenstein and his colleagues are very pleased with the results, as are the lighting designers who have used the new system so far. The RoboSpot system was first tested at the opera house three years ago when a system was rented for the Vienna Opera Ball. The test was a major success and confirmed that the system met their high standards.
However, it wasn’t until the FORTE and its dedicated FollowSpot version were released earlier this year that all technical requirements were fully met, making it possible to standardize both FOH lighting and followspotting with the same fixture type.
The followspot positions are located on the upper gallery in the center of the FOH lighting area, which was already extremely tight—so the fixtures needed to be as compact as possible.
They preferred to have a human operator on the followspot instead of using a tracking system. Therefore, the FORTE FollowSpots were equipped with LightMaster handles. These allow the followspot operators to manually control pan and tilt via the handles, while also adjusting the zoom and intensity of the fixtures. Other parameters are controlled through the venue’s main lighting console, an ETC GIO.
A specially customized software enables the built-in FORTE FollowSpot camera output to be displayed on monitors mounted on the wall of the followspot booth. This setup allows operators to utilize some functions of the RoboSpot system via the screens while simultaneously viewing the stage directly in the traditional way. Using the LightMaster buttons, operators can toggle the crosshair marker on and off and zoom the camera in and out.
“ROBE was extremely flexible and willing to adapt their RoboSpot software to find exactly the solution we needed,” said Robert. He described FORTE as a powerful, cost-effective, and “highly efficient” moving light for larger performance venues. He also mentioned that all lighting designers who have visited and experienced the new system so far have been “very satisfied.”