A Canadian creative and performing arts company, Ex Machina, spearheaded by director/actor/playwright/scenic artist Robert Lepage, is fusing high tech and high art for New York Metropolitan Opera's re-imagining of Richard Wagner's 19th Century four-part opera, Der Ring des Nibelungen, or The Ring. The production is using an innovative stage design, infrared interactive software and 3-D projection technology to update The Met's previous production of the controversial composer's masterwork – the more traditional Ring production by Otto Schenk and Günther Schneider-Siemssen, which ran for more than 20 years. The prelude to this quartet of dramas, Das Rheingold, opened The Met's opera season in the fall of 2010. The second installment, Die Walküre, premieres this month (April), and the third and fourth operas, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, are scheduled for fall 2011 and early 2012, respectively. (The Met will present three complete Ring cycles in April and May 2012.)
Cirque-uitous Route
In 2005, Lepage was asked by Cirque du Soleil to design and direct its "gravity defying" show, KÀ, for the MGM Grand in Vegas. That same year, Peter Gelb, the Met's general manager, contacted Lepage to discuss the possibility of bringing a high-tech version of The Ring, also using many of the same elements inherent in the Cirque show: video imagery, triggered devices and suspended performers.
By 2007, physical construction of the set was underway and was eventually completed in March 2010. Set designer Carl Fillion says he paid close attention to historic performances of The Ring at The Met "to see how each version resolved the challenges the piece gives." However, Fillion admits that many of the visual elements have been reevaluated for the 2010-2012 revamp.
It is indeed difficult to look past some of the visual and interactive flash of the dramas, but perhaps we miss the point if we do. Wagner's sweeping, bold music is tailor-made for technological reinvention.
"The Ring is about change," said Lepage. "I try to be extremely respectful of Wagner's storytelling, but in a very modern context."
Stage Design
Helping to update The Ring is the innovative stage design initially hatched by Fillion – a set largely composed of 24 triangular-shaped fiberglass-covered aluminum planks (each 30 feet in length), upon which video is projected.
The planks, which resemble seesaws, move independently of one another and can rotate 360 degrees around the hydraulically-powered central axis (a pair of pneumonic brakes can engage or disengage the planks from the central axis), which is secured by two steel, 26-foot tall elevator towers.
Constructed by Scène Éthique in their Varennes, Quebec warehouse, the 40-ton monstrosity, dubbed "The Machine" by the production team, forced The Met to install steel reinforcement beams for its stage.
"I worked with [Lepage] for The Met's 2008 production of Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust," says Fillion. "For that production, Robert's first for The Met, we used 24 video projection boxes to form a grid. The concept of the grid in Faust was based upon the idea of fragmented levels, divisions between hell, heaven, the angels, and the choir. But the action remained 2-D. The Ring, however, should not be prisoner of space; it needs to be more free in the spatial volume."
The elegant structural design and movement of The Machine's planks has allowed the production team a great deal of latitude, in more ways than one. These planks can be transformed into the basic shape of whatever a scene may require (i.e. the body of a Dragon, a river, a staircase, etc.). During performances actors are attached to and stabilized via cables as they soar next to and scale these planks. (Acrobats often perform stunts for performers.)
When these massive seesaws remain horizontal to the stage, performers can "step on the projection, which brings the drama into the realm of 3-D," says Fillion.
The set also provides a rich and colorful environment for re-imagining key dramatic moments. In one memorable scene in Die Walküre, the supreme god Wotan (played by Bryn Terfel) commands his daughter, the disobedient Valkyrie/warrior Brünnhilde (Deborah Voigt), to be imprisoned in a wall of fire and rescued only by a fearless hero.
"That visual effect is created by a composition of video projection and retro projection with a fair amount of haze," says lighting designer Etienne Boucher. "Yes, we use actual smoke. We've backlit the set so the light can pass into the space between each plank."
"Due to all the deep ambers and reds, we call that visual effect ‘the barbecue,'" says John Froelich, an assistant resident lighting designer at The Met. "The way the light hits The Machine from behind makes it appear ominous. It looks as if this huge shape is suspended in the air, magically."
Division of Labor
In general, the lighting crew is in charge of "hitting" the performers ("the bodies," as Froelich says) and the video projection crew oversees the environment and set.
"In this way, we don't have to worry about the pile up of projection versus lighting," says Froelich. "Every now and again we have had to provide some surface textures on the planks, with a textured gobo. We quickly came to the realization that anything that we had in our rig was not supposed to hit any part of the stage, even the masking [of] the two vertical sections that held up the planks. We weren't supposed to touch anything with light."
Despite the pivotal role of video projections, Froelich says the four-part musical drama is The Met's largest moving lights show to date. "For such a small set, which is only 60 feet wide, and as deep as the planks are, plus the apron, we have many moving lights," says Froelich. "We had 28 [Vari-Lite] VL3500Q [spot] profiles and 10, VL3500 washes in the air. That's how many we used to make sure that we were hitting every person, in every spot, at the right time."
Virtuality vs. Reality
One of the major challenges facing the lighting team has been negotiating the gap between the lighting positions mapped by Proluxon's pre-visualization software, Wysiwyg, and the actual measurements of The Met's performance space.
"At the end of Das Rheingold, [Boucher] had a chance to direct all of the moving lights, and based his calculations for his virtual model on his preliminary measurements," says Froelich. "All the shutter flags were cut into a particular shape and hitting a certain part of the set. A grandMA2 was running MA1 software to program the moves of The Machine along with the lighting effects that Etienne wanted to work on."
Attempting to bring the virtual world into actuality proved frustrating at times. "When you're hanging a Vari-Lite in a spot where a Source 4 used to be, it's not going to fit perfectly into the same position," Froelich says. "The gait of the instrument shooting through the lens isn't going to be in the same spot where the Source 4 gait was. You compound that with a 45- or 50-foot throw and what looked like a quarter of an inch off in the virtual model ends up being a couple of feet, in reality."
Despite growing pains and a lot of refocusing, the lighting designer says he has no complaints about virtual 3-D modeling. "It was worth it," Boucher says. "I saved a fair amount of time and stress."
Sound, Space, Motion
The Ex Machina version of The Ring cycle further explores the relationship between environment and movement by working in conjunction with Réalisations.net, which provides the software system called Sensei for interactive infrared (IR) video projection portion of the production.
Body movements and vocal amplitude of the performers are detected via IR cameras/motion detectors and microphones; this audio and physical information is relayed to the Sensei tracking software, which triggers effects and images (everything from water bubbles to clouds) that are projected onto The Machine's 24 planks.
"We're tracking the stage and the actors with three infrared cameras," says Roger Parent, president of Réalisations.net. "Several of what we call ‘nonvisible' light projectors emit infrared from the apron; they wash the stage with infrared projection and track the movement of the performers. The gestures of the cast are then interpreted by computers running the Sensei software."
IR interference, which can disturb the interactivity effects, is dealt with through the use of gel filters on pertinent lighting devices. In addition, the video projections are programmed to adjust to movement of the planks.
"One side of the video screen is flat and the other is more like a giant triangle," says Parent. "So, you have two video surfaces to deal with per [plank]. One of our jobs is to assign imagery content to different video projectors. We have three video projectors that are very high on the balconies [in ceiling projection booth] and six others that are on the lower [parterre] level. As the scenery moves, we have to determine which projector is best to cover a particular surface. We are calculating all of that live. Add on top of that sound detection and you understand that we are quite busy."
A Montreal-based company, Maginaire, will be programming 3-D projection technology for forest scenes in the Siegfried opera, due October 2011. This system, licensed to Réalisations for The Met operas, will interact with the infrared technology already in use, giving new meaning to the phrase "adding depth to a performance."
"The 3-D technology consists of projecting computer generated environments that are constantly updating the virtual camera and lighting system," says Parent. "These effects correlate in sync with the movements of the set while matching the onstage lighting, creating the illusion of a hologram inside a box."
In simplest terms, the motion of The Machine combined with various layers of video projection give the perception of dimension. "Multiple views of the fractal world are shown during the rotation or movement of the set," says Maginaire's president, Catalin Alexandru Duru, who programmed the application. "Depth is inferred from the presented information: correlated movement and realistic rendering."
Some traditionalists might have balked about bringing The Ring into the digital era, but, as Froelich suggests, Wagner himself might have supported the epic sweep of today's interactive technologies. "I would think that if someone were to approach Wagner and say, ‘We want to take a completely different view of this magnificent piece of music, and interpret it in a way that no one else has done before,' I think he would have been very excited about that."
Crew (partial list)
Director: Robert Lepage
Set Designer: Carl Fillion
Lighting Designer: Etienne Boucher
Video Image Artist: Boris Firquet
(Das Rheingold and Die Walküre)
Video Image Artist: Pedro Pires (Siegfried)
Costume Designer: François St-Aubin
Associate Director: Neilson Vignola
Assistant Stage Directors: Gina Lapinski, Stephen Pickover, J. Knighten Smit
Production Stage Manager: Raymond Menard
Resident Lighting Designer: Wayne Chouinard
Assistant Resident Lighting Designers: John Froelich, Aaron Sporer
Stage Managers: Gary Dietrich, Theresa Ganley, Cristobel Langan, Margo Maier-Moul, Scott Moon, Jonathan Waterfield
Conductor/Musical Director: James Levine
Associate Technical Director: Paul Masck
Production Coordinator: Catherine Mallary
Technical Operations Manager: Carolyn Ferrell
Project Managers: Milan Dale, Elizabeth Mills, Jerad Schomer
Master Carpenter: Stephen A. Diaz
Master Electricians: Paul Donahue
Interactive Projections: Réalisations.net
Stage Construction: Scène Éthique Studio
Gear
1 grandMA2 console
28 Vari*Lite VL3500Q Profiles
10 Vari*Lite VL3500 Washes
13 ETC Selador Vivid 63" LED strips
18 Choma-Q Color Block 2 LEDs
2 Robert Juliat 2.5kW modular spots (9°/26°)
2 ADB Warp profile spots (22°/50°)
55 ETC Source 4 fixtures (5°, 19°, 26°, 36°)
3 ETC Source 4 PAR w/ NSP lens
1 Fresnel (500W/6")
7 Mole-Richardson Nook lights (650W)
1 Arri 4kW HMI theatre Fresnel
5 Lycian 1290 XLT followspots
3 Robert Juliat Aramis followspots
3 PANI 1200W followspots
1 Rosco X24 X-Effects Projector
5 Martin Atomic 3000 DMX strobes
7 Panasonic 10k PT D-10000U projectors
2 Christie 30k Roadie projectors
1 Christie 35k Roadie projectors
