For nearly thirty years, Durham Marenghi has been lighting
Raymond Gubbay’s Classical Spectacular show. His designs for this production
have enthralled audiences at the Royal Albert Hall for decades as he describes:
“Classical Spectacular has developed from an all Parcan rig with me operating
on a Celco Gold to the addition of Vari*Lites on an Artisan desk. I believe
that we had the first Vari*Lite fixtures outside of Rock ‘n’ Roll from the VL1
upwards, through the LSD Icon control and fixtures and then on to a full
automated system controlled by a grandMA from MA Lighting.”
“Over the years we have created a massive library of musical
pieces with many different rigs and the grandMA2 has converted a lot of this
data into the current repertoire. I know of few other control systems that
could have achieved this.”
With MA control at the heart of the design, Marenghi goes on to
reflect on how the rest of the rig has developed. “Since those years of the PAR
64, my fixture choices have obviously moved on a little! These days it is a
Claypaky rig that creates what I am looking for. The Scenius range benefits
from the CRI of the new OSRAM lamp which has a fantastic range across the
spectrum and allows me to use saturated primary colours on the colour wheel
even with a star field gobo; the effect is still visible. The new Scenius Unico
allows me to create some almost laser like lines using the shutter blades and
the great optics while the Scenius Spot model gives me a wide range of the gobo
options to keep each of the twenty odd musical pieces looking different
especially with that superb range and depth of colour choices.”
Just as the trusty Parcan has been consigned to the history
books, lighting control has moved on apace as Marenghi reflects: “Back in the
day we used to rent an arena at London’s Docklands to create a show which had
its first performance on the evening of the get-in day at the Royal Albert
Hall. This had a significant cost in terms of venue, equipment and crew and
with the appearance of WYSIWYG from CAST lighting we moved into the virtual
world using MA Lighting control.
\”Today the entire show is currently programmed by Ryan
Hopkins in WYSIWYG and we make a few changes to the focuses on the morning of
the show; the rig shapes are always complex and gravity has an influence on how
fixtures hang in the real world as opposed to the virtual. The orchestra
rehearse in the afternoon and then we open Pandora\’s box in the evening!\”
“The rig design changes every second or third season so the show
remains at the cutting edge of current technology; the grandMA2 control, the
Robert Juliat followspots and the Claypaky range of fixtures shine brightly
down onto a sometimes slightly bemused orchestra!”
Ambersphere Solutions is MA Lighting’s exclusive distributor in
UK.
Photo: © Paul Sanders courtesy of Raymond Gubbay Ltd
