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HSL at Opera Holland Park

HSL Productions has supplied a complete stage lighting and sound system to the high profile nine-week Opera Holland Park season, plus site-wide lighting and electrics, power distribution and full public address and announcement audio.

The acclaimed season - which enjoys a completely sold out run - features a total of six full scale productions, each running two at a time in repertory, and is promoted by the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea. This year’s shows included Macbeth, La Sonnambula, Madame Butterfly, L’elisir d’amore, Eugene Onegin and Andrea Chénier, accompanied by the Grammy Award winning City of London Sinfonia.

Technical production is overseen and co-ordinated by the Council’s operations manager Mike Harth, who works with his team of technical staff who this year included chief LX Jonathan Rouse and deputy chief LX Graham Parker. The shows are produced by James Clutton.

HSL has been supplying Opera Holland Park for the last three seasons, project managed for them by James Ewart. “They gave us a great deal at a good price,” says Harth. Although it’s effectively a dry hire, HSL sends a full crew down to site, including a qualified electrician for the four-week get-in and build period, starting in May.

In this time, they built a complete 830 capacity theatre and site infrastructure from scratch to the highest possible specifications. This includes all backstage facilities and dressing rooms as well as the stage, auditorium, picnic and public areas and front of house, all complete with a degree of weatherising.

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

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 coming out from the centre. There are also four booms either side of stage.

The FOH lamps provide a fixed focus wash. This is designed into the overall rig as the seating banks below make then virtually inaccessible. It’s also because the shows are performed in rep, so there’s a limited amount of re-focus time available each night, so any elements that can remain static or constant are a bonus. Everything else lighting wise is fully focusable.

“The idea is to provide a good and dynamic generic lighting rig offering plenty of choice for the three LD’s involved across the six different productions,” explains Harth. They sat down with HSL at the start of the season and discussed what was needed. The supply includes over 150 lanterns in total, a mix of Source Fours and Source Four Zooms, PARs, Fresnels plus Chroma Q scrollers for the FOH Source Fours to maximise their flexibility.

HSL supplied 12 moving lights to the productions: four Coemar CF7 HEXs and eight Martin MAC 600s.

Control is a Strand 520 for the stage, and a simple Zero 88 Elara for the site and house lighting.

There are over 140 ways of LightProcessor Paradime dimming in 36-way touring racks, plus a separate dimmer dealing with all the site lighting. The lighting around the site includes festoons, sodiums and floods, which are utilised to light practical elements including walkways and picnic areas as well as decorative elements such as architectural lighting of stone work and trees. HSL also supplied all cabling and mains and a certificated electrician for the build to ensure it was installed to meet all the standard health and safety and licensing regulations.

On the audio front, HSL supplied a selection of Community speakers, which are installed across the main trussing grid in the auditorium. A Total of six Solution Series 915 are hung from the grid. There is the possibility of using this 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 as far as what’s happening onstage is concerned, the audio system remains very much a back-up plan.

However, the Yamaha M2500 console does run all the site announcements and the public address system and 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 for the deliverance of spot sound effects in specific productions. There are two Denon CD decks, a cassette deck and a Sony Mini disk player available for source material.

HSL also supplied a variety of mics and a wedge foldback system that’s utilised for piano rehearsals. The sound was set up by HSL’s Alex Linney.

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

HSL have also supplied a comprehensive assortment of spares. Being based in Blackburn they wanted to ensure that Harth and his crew would have everything they might need right there on site without having to rely on couriers or the post! “The kit came out from HSL extremely well prepped,” says Rouse. “Which was great. It’s all good quality and a lot of it is new.”

The planning and logistics of the get-in also required some lateral thinking. With no artic access possible on site, it was crucial that everything appeared at the right time and in the right order.

And now it’s all up and running, there are plenty of smiling faces.

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HSL at Opera Holland Park

7th July 2005

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