Love Never Dies, the long-awaited and highly anticipated sequel to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s smash-hit musical The Phantom of the Opera, opened in London in March with an ETC Eos control desk and a plethora of ETC Source Four Revolutions and Source Fours.
Control for the rig as a whole is from an ETC Eos control system, including an Eos 8K desk and RPU backup together with a remote video interface (RVI) complete with X-Keys keyboard, in order to provide video to the lighting designer, Paule Constable. Well known for her work in the fields of opera, drama and musicals, Paule has specified 48 ETC Revolutions among the moving lights in the rig, which also includes 40 ETC Source Fours of varying beam angles.
Commenting on the Eos, she says: “I’m the word’s biggest fan; it does everything I want it to do. As well as running the lighting, I also had it running a Hippotizer media server and F:light stage automation software, which allows us to track a chair on stage as a revolve moves it.
“We push the board quite hard, but it’s great in the hands of a brilliant programmer – in this case, Nick Simmons.
“We specified the Source Four Revolutions because we wanted a moving profile fixture with a colour scroller so I could have the exact colour that I wanted, rather than the approximation you sometimes end up with when colour mixing. I like to have absolute control over my colour palette, and there are not many movers which mix well. We were also very tight for space, and Revolutions are relatively small for a moving light. For this show we’re using 95% automated fixtures; when it moves to New York in November, that will probably go up to 98%.”
Working with Paule and Nick on the show are associate LD Beky Stoddart, production electrician Gerry Amies and his team including Chris Dunford and Ian Moulds, with David Draude and Michael Scott working on the show’s many scenic practicals. The show’s production manager is Steve Rebbeck, with lighting and control supplied by White Light.
Since its 1986 debut Her Majesty’s Theatre in London, where it continues to play, The Phantom of the Opera has been seen in more than 25 countries by more than 100 million people. Love Never Dies continues the story of the Phantom, following his move across the Atlantic to haunt the fairgrounds of Coney Island.
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