Austria - Follow-Me has played a vital role in the elaborate production of Der Freischütz at the Bregenzer Festspiele in Austria with its Follow-Me 3D SIX and Follow-Me Track-iT systems. The production, held on the festival's 2,500sq,m stage on Lake Constance, presented technical challenges requiring both automated and manual tracking capabilities to accommodate performers emerging from water and navigating complex steel structures.
Carl Maria von Weber's opera Der Freischütz captivated audiences in German director Philipp Stölzl's production, reaching approximately 374,000 people across 55 performances during the 2024/25 seasons. Stölzl, who served as director and designer for both stage and lighting, created a spooky, poetic world for this romantic horror story.
Taking place over July and August with lighting design and programming handled by Florian Schmitt, Bregenzer Festspiele's annual large-scale opera production is known worldwide for its set designs and technical complexity. This year's production of Der Freischütz featured 22 steel trees rising from the lake, seven light towers with between three and 10 lights each, and a front truss behind the audience area housing an additional eight fixtures used as follow-spots.
Riccardo Zottele, Follow-Me system admin for the production, explains the scale of the challenge: "It's a massive stage, so the lighting has to illuminate the whole area, and sometimes only parts of it,” he says. “The designers have to work not only with the artificial light, but also because the show starts at around 9pm, so they have to work with the sunset."
The production team chose Follow-Me's Track-iT system as the primary automated tracking solution, supplemented by Follow-Me 3D SIX for manual backup operations. The hybrid approach proved essential given the tricky environmental conditions.
The Follow-Me Track-iT system, supplied by LMP Lichttechnik, utilised 25 anchors strategically positioned around the stage area to track eight performers. Seven performers were tracked using automated tracking, while one required fully manual operation due to the complexity of the movements and, despite initial concerns about interference from water and steel, the system performed flawlessly.
The production deployed 33 fixtures controlled through the Follow-Me system. To handle the challenging transitions between automated and manual tracking, the team integrated a Eurolite Scene Setter fader wing for seamless Z-height control. The complex topography of the set, which rises to around 10m at its highest point, required around 400 calibration points to ensure accurate tracking across the village-inspired landscape.
"It's really great that you can switch between manual and automated tracking," notes Zottele. "We don't have all the areas where performers go up measured out. For example, there is a bed that lifts up with a hydraulic arm, and we don't have the bed measured out in the top position, so we made a preset where if it's at the top, the default height reflects that."
