The fantastic “bare stage’ Carmen production took advantage of the arid, boundless expanses of the boulder strewn natural environment; this was literally “ground breaking’ as the set was radically bulldozed and sculptured out of the barren desert terrain.
Featuring William Orlandi’s stunningly visual production design, Carmen was directed by Giancarlo del Monaco and conducted by maestro Daniel Oren with lighting design created by Avi Yona Bueno (aka Bambi).
The Design Group team was led by production director Eyal Lavee and site and production manager Elad Mainz, who built on the massive learning curves of the previous two years; the site is now a real practical working environment.
Lavee and Mainz worked with up to 150 crew and technicians on site over a sustained two-month period.
The technical package included creating the performance area, supplying seating tribunes to accommodate 7 500 people each night and all the necessary site and production infrastructure.
The process involved close collaboration with the opera’s production team led by events and operations manager, Uri Hartman.
Leading UK rental companies HSL and Britannia Row were again engaged by The Design Group to provide the very best quality in stage lighting and sound.
With three years of experience working in the toughest desert environment, they all knew what to expect – including the complete unpredictability of life, nature and technology out in the desert!
This was just one of many ephemeral threads making it another magical and completely unique production at Masada.
Setting the scene
At a quick glance the set may not have looked like anything but sculpting the rocks and sand of the former sea bed into the sultry Seville backdrop for Carmen took enormous effort and meticulous planning.
Working with the bare stage required: “A completely different approach and entering a different visual head-space,’ explains Elad Mainz.
Plenty of technology was ensconced in the set – larger items like wedge monitors and lights together with copious amounts of cabling, and to maintain the best site lines, a new lower orchestra pit was excavated.
Wide, stripped back and sparse, the whole space took an on almost filmic appearance.
Several large set pieces were constructed including a 15-metre long train consisting of an engine and three wagons, plus 50 metres of railroad track upstage.
A large 120 square metre dance stage was comprised of 20 segments that had to be carried onstage and assembled and removed in three and a half minutes.
At the back of the performance area set company Irgunit (part of The Design Group) completed an industrial scale installation with electricity pylons and telegraph poles, juxtaposing starkly with the barren desert.
As a piece of open air staging, the passion, drama and well-balanced accessibility of Carmen worked beautifully and organically.
Lighting
It was HSL’s crew chief Ian Stevens’ third stint at Masada, and although the same demanding working conditions existed; experience and acclimatisation also made it much easier.
He was joined by Matt Brown and they worked with three top Israeli lighting technicians – Tsafrir Dagan (Saffi), and Itay and Ran Hafner.
Director Giancarlo del Monaco had a very clear vision about the naturalistic lighting he wanted, and Bambi had his work cut out to bring exactly the right amount of layering, texturing and specific lighting quality needed to paint the bigger picture.
The daylight scenes were based around subtle different colour temperature whites and ambers, while the night ones were around rich, sumptuous shades of blue.
Simple, traditional, effective.
The challenges of working with restricted colour palettes also added resonance and depth to the production. The 150 moving lights were all Robe – specified for numerous reasons including their propensity to withstand rugged environments.
The 82 Robe ColorSpot 2500E ATs and 32 x ColorSpot 1200E ATs were also picked for their intensity, needed to cover the long throw distances to the stage of up to 80 metres from the side and front gantries. Thirty Robe REDWash 3Ÿ192s were stationed upstage embedded in the “scenic’ mountains.
Other lighting from HSL included about 200 ETC Source Fours, Strand 5K Bambino fresnels fitted with Chroma-Q M5 Mk II colour scrollers, an assortment of single PARs and Raylites and several strings of 250W and 600W ACLs, plus all dimming, distro and cabling.
Masada Mountain was lit at strategic moments with sixty 5K Panther searchlights and 20 sets of 600W ACLs, all running off a City Theatrical wireless DMX system.
Alon Cohen programmed and operated the show using a CompuLite Vector Red console.
The lighting department also surpassed themselves; backstage hospitality included well stocked fridges and freezers, pleasant chill out areas with the best Wifi hotspots and the now legendary Stevens Cafe & Grill, where Ian’s toasted sandwiches have become Masada site folklore!
Sound
Several new faces appeared on the Britannia Row crew of 10 this year including crew chief Tristan Farrow, who wasn’t fazed by any of the challenges of the desert and embraced the camaraderie and good working atmosphere.
The L-Acoustics Kudo sound system that worked so successfully last year was back again, with 14 Kudos in the main hangs, seven in the sides and six SB218 subs per side on the floor.
The 55-metre wide stage aperture presented its own audio issues together with the large orchestra pit and general loudness of the singers onstage. They relied heavily on precisely positioned infills – four stacks of three-high dV-DOSC and three dV SUBs – to focus as much “weight’ as possible into the middle of the auditorium.
L-Acoustics 108 speakers formed the delay rings – a row of eight behind the first tier of seating and another half way up the bleachers to freshen up the high end.
FOH engineer Barry Bartlett mixed the show using a Midas XL8 console. Monitors were mixed by Dee Miller from the comfort of a climate controlled container backstage.
Operas don’t usually utilise monitors when performing in venues, but in the unique “without walls’ scenario at Masada the essential monitor system function was to mimic a room sound.
The front-of-stage ring of Turbosound TFM420 wedges – completely buried in the earth of the stage floor – were delayed to the conductor’s position in the pit.
A side hang of 1 x dV-DOSC SUB and four dVs pre side covered the side “walls’ in the mid-stage position, with upstage stacks of two-high dV-DOSC giving a back wall effect at the rear of the space – concealed in the scenic mountains. The concept worked extremely well in terms of creating a sound field for the performers.
The mics were all DPA 4061 headsets. The 10 principals and 30 chorus performers were close-mic’d, with a selection of shot-gun mics for ambient pickups onstage and 54 channels of Schoeps for the orchestra.
The Sennheiser 5000 radio system consisted of 48 x 3782 Mk II receivers and 48 x 5212 belt packs, running via eight antennae dotted around the stage, routed into a custom distro system from Sennheiser.
This was looked after by Barry McLeod who encountered some surprises when discovering the “real’ RF interference levels – and sources – present in an empty desert space!
Moving on
Carmen was another major creative and technical achievement for both the Israeli Opera and The Design Group, uniting many disciplines, skills, talents, energising some great teamwork and producing awesome results.
Having quickly built an international reputation for this fresh and invigorating festival phenomena – literally right out of nothing in the desert – the Opera Festival will continue next year with a new production of Puccini’s Turandot.
By Louise Stickland
