© Ruth & Martin Walz, Dutch National Opera
The Netherlands - As part of a 15-hour performance spread over three days, Dutch National Opera performed major parts of Karlheinz Stockhausen's aus LICHT cycle.
One of the world’s top five opera companies, the Dutch National Opera opted for a combination of Christie Terra for AV distribution and processing, and Christie Pandoras Box for content management and control of the four LED video walls, cameras and projectors used throughout the performance space.
The performances were produced in cooperation with the Holland Festival, the Royal Conservatory in The Hague and the Stockhausen Foundation, and held at Amsterdam’s Gashouder, a former industrial hall that now serves as an event space. The audience experienced some of the highlights from the artist's seven operas, named after weekdays, during the three-day performance. This is the first time that a summary of aus LICHT has been staged.
Christie partner Rolight supplied the Christie Terra AV distribution equipment. Two Christie Pandoras Box Managers and two Christie Pandoras Box Quad Servers supplied source signals to Christie Terra Transmitters. Four Terra receivers supplied signals to each of the four LED walls, and four more Terra units were used for previewing AV sources and broadcast feeds. The system operated from a 10G Ethernet switch and a Terra Controller was used to configure and control signal routing.
The large-scale production was recorded, with the aim of reproducing the entire sound universe of Stockhausen's aus LICHT, with three wireless cameras in the hall, six remote cameras, two wireless cameras outdoors and four cameras in four helicopters. All feeds were supplied to the Pandoras Box servers directly, as well as through a vision mixer which was fed into the server providing the ability to do direct switching for some scenes.
In combination with Christie Pandoras Box, Terra features were exploited to the fullest. "The ability to programme during rehearsals without jumping in the sequence or having to programme blindly in a second system made our work much easier," says Huijgen.
The three-day staged programme not only convinced critics and fans, but the equipment was the right choice: "Pandoras Box and Christie Terra were simply a very good combination," says Huijgen.
After the project, the equipment was reinstalled at the opera house and the Terra system will be used as a standard solution for AV distribution including delivery of AV content to various locations in the foyers.

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