HSL is again supplying a complete stage lighting and sound system to the high profile 9-week Opera Holland Park season, together with site-wide lighting and electrics, power distribution and full public address and announcement audio.

The completely sold out event features 6 full scale productions, each run two at a time in repertory for three weeks, and is promoted by the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea.

This year's shows included “The Merry Widow” (see photos), "Fedora", "Manon Lescaut", "Cosi Fan Tutte", "Rigoletto" and "The Queen of Spades", all accompanied by the Grammy Award winning City of London Sinfonia.

The technical production is overseen and co-ordinated by the Council's Operations Manager Mike Harth, working closely with his team of technical staff including chief LX Gary Cooper, deputy chief LX Andreas Atkinson and master carpenter Brendan McEvoy.

HSL has supplied Opera Holland Park for the last 4 seasons, a job that's project managed for them by Sean McGlone in the office and James Ewart on site. "They give us excellent service and a great deal" comments Harth. Although effectively a dry hire, HSL sends a full crew to site, including a qualified electrician for the 4 week get-in and build period, starting in May.

A complete 830 capacity theatre and site infrastructure is constructed from scratch in this time - to the highest possible specifications - including backstage facilities and dressing rooms plus the stage, auditorium, picnic and public areas and front of house.

The site has its own challenges. The stage is built under a custom canopy roof, backing on to Holland House, a former Jacobean mansion, built in 1607 for Sir Walter Cope, Chancellor of the Exchequer to James I.


Light Fantastic

The canopy has two structural points that are also used to fly the spine of the lighting rig mother grid - a carefully balanced network of trussing runs emanating from the centre and providing all the overhead lighting positions. There’s also four side-stage booms per side for additional lighting positions.

HSL are supplying approximately 150 lamps - a mix of Source Fours and Source Four Zooms, PARs, fresnels plus Chroma Q scrollers for the FOH Source Fours to maximise their flexibility. This year there’s also 12 moving lights – six Robe ColorSpot 1200 ATs and six Martin Professional MAC 600s. The lighting desk is a Strand 520.

The FOH lamps provide are refocused for each production, but can't be physically moved as they critically balance the mother grid. These parameters are taken into consideration at the outset of and in the overall design. However with the shows performed in rep, there's a limited amount of re-focus time available each night, so static or constant  elements are actually a bonus in this case!

Lighting needs to provide a good, dynamic generic lighting rig offering plenty of choice for the three LD's involved across the six different productions. Harth and his team sit down with HSL at the start of the season and discuss all the requirements. Some of Opera Holland Park’s more specific lighting and technical production elements are flight-cased up at the end of each season and left stored at HSL until the next.

There’s over 140 ways of LightProcessor Paradime dimming in 36-way touring racks, plus a separate dimmer dealing with all the site lighting.

The latter includes festoons, sodiums and floods, utilised to light walkways and picnic areas as well as for more decorative elements like architectural lighting of the stone work and trees. HSL also supplies all cabling and mains.


Sound in the Community

Audio-wise, HSL has supplied 6 Community Solution Series 915 speakers, which are installed across the main trussing grid in the auditorium. These can be utilised for the show if conditions get challenging (e.g. heavy rain storms), but the operas are all sung without amplification and the orchestra plays acoustically, so the audio system is very much a back-up plan.

However, the Yamaha M2500 console does run all the site announcements and the public address system, so has a vital role in the big picture. It’s fully battery backed up to meet the licensing requirements, and all the equipment is also on UPSs. Sound is run through a limiter to keep the levels below 80dB.

The console's main show role is delivering spot sound effects in specific productions, and there are two Denon CD decks, a cassette deck and a Sony mini disk player available for source material.

HSL is also supplying a variety of mics and a wedge foldback system that’s utilised for piano rehearsals.

Around the site, HSL have supplied a selection of waterproof speakers for the public address system.


Going Spare!

The selection of spares left on site is comprehensive – to minimise trips back and forth to HSL's HQ in Blackburn and reliance on couriers or the post! "The kit came out from HSL extremely well prepped" says Gary Cooper "And it's all proving extremely reliable"


Date of issue: July 2006