Astera lights Malmö Opera’s Funny Girl
- Details
Planned two years earlier and fully sold out many months in advance, Malmö Opera decided to go ahead in delivering all their seasonal main house productions as the budgets were already allocated and spent.
Leading Swedish lighting designer Fredrik Jonsson was delighted to be back working on a live show and helping to create the aesthetic for this vibrant, funny, and poignant piece known for its intricate production numbers.
Malmö Opera has a quantity of Astera fixtures in its lighting inventory which are used for multiple situations and solutions across their range of productions, and Fredrik made the most of the tiny Astera AX3 LightDrops to highlight important details on the elaborate Funny Girl sets designed by Martin Chocholousek.
Ten AX3s were hidden behind custom golden shell casings that emulated classic 1930’s Ziegfeld Follies era footlights in line with period setting of the piece.
The AX3s were attached magnetically to metallic plates behind the plastic shell shapes, slightly angled up to authentically simulate footlights coming from the orchestra pit area.
Fredrik added some AX3s inside the two large ventilation funnels of the battleship set to highlight the interior of the funnel ends and give these more prominence. AX3s positioned in the bottom of the ventilation tubes allowed Fredrik to achieve a highlight in the bend at the top of the funnel which faced the audience.
More AX3s were utilised on a striking chandelier that sat on the floor for the first scene at Nicky Arnstein’s mansion when he and ‘funny girl’ Fanny Brice move in as newlyweds.
All these AX3s were controlled through the Operas’ main grandMA lighting console.
