Green Hippo

Het Muziektheater Amsterdam - The Amsterdam Music Theatre

Het Muziektheater Amsterdam - The Amsterdam Music Theatre

After decades of changing plans for the Amsterdam Muziektheater, designs for a Music Theatre and City Hall complex were finally signed off in 1981 and building commenced. Despite protests the Amsterdam Muziektheater officially opened on 23^rd September 1986, 71 years after its initial idea was conceived.

The Dutch National Opera and the Dutch National Ballet moved in as the theatre’s resident companies, but the venue also welcomes some of the best international companies, artists and singers every year. These have included the Martha Graham Dance Company, the Batsheva Dance Company, La La Human Steps as well as performers the likes of Neil Young, Tracey Chapman and Leonard Cohen. Every year the venue produces in excess of 12 operas and 10 ballets with everything done in-house, including the scenery, costumes as well as lighting and video production. The shows also get recorded in HD and broadcast on local television as well as released on Blu-Ray and DVD.

Previously the venue relied on their Bonsaidrive HD players to provide standard video projection for their projects. However, in 2009 they decided to purchase two Hippotizer HD media servers, which were originally intended for the production ‘Adam in Exile’. Video designer Arjen Klerkx created impressive projections on the elaborate stage design. This incorporated projection on the backdrop as well as the panels of a raised platform upstage. Furthermore, he projected on the back of a gigantic figure at centre stage.

Pieter Huijgen, deputy head of the lighting department at The Amsterdam Music Theatre, explains, that since ‘Adam in Exile’ they have been utilising the Hippotizers for a steadily increasing number of productions with ever more extensive configurations. Currently they are working with two flightcases, each containing:

• Hippotizer HD V3, incl. 4 Channel  composite  and single SDI input card
• an UPS (uninterruptable powersystem)
• a rackmounted KVM switch
• a drawer with 2x 50m DVI Fibre reel and storage for a ZooKeeper laptop
• DVI parrots on all outputs
• a Matrox triplehead2go for any multiple projector set-ups

With separate lighting and AV departments that include more than 40 staff, the Hippotizer encouraged a strong collaboration from both teams. The staff prefers to control their media servers via the lighting desk. They use a Transtechnik board with Libra software, which allows them to virtually design their lighting desk and Pieter Huijgen comments that:

“The introduction of the Hippotizer meant some kind of merger between video technicians and lightboard operators. The video technicians learned how to operate the lighting board and the light technicians and operators became more familiar with video projection and all techniques involved with this.�

In late 2009 the production of Puccini’s ‘La Fanciulla del West’ saw a 24m x 12m projection being created using three Barco R12+ projectors mounted and rotated at 90 degrees to project onto the wide-screen backdrop upstage, successfully utilising the VideoMapper component. One of the highlights was the MGM lion appearing for the close of this modernised American gold-rush story.

Earlier this year the Hippotizers were used in conjunction with 42 Mitsubishi OD 10LED wall modules for Dallapicolla’s ‘Il Prigioniero’. The massive LED wall was mounted on a motorized set which appeared on stage at the end of the opera. The Hippotizers provided the fire on the video wall creating a burning stake.

This summer saw the production of Raskatov’s ‘A Dog’s Heart’ directed by prestigious Simon McBurney and produced in conjunction with Complicite, London. The show used projections onto the large moving scenic wall upstage, doubling as a wall and projection screen.

If this has wet your appetite, ‘A Dog’s Heart’ can be seen at the London Coliseum at the end of this month.

More recently the Muziektheater produced ‘Dancer, Clown, God’ telling the story of the famous dancer Nijinski which incorporated projections onto several moving screens.

Pieter Huijgen explains that “The Hippotizers become more and more a substitute for our Bonsaidrive harddisk players, which we mainly used for standard videoprojection. [...] Nowadays the demands are more and more to do videoprojection on scenery parts, floors etc. [...] This process [video editing] has literally moved on stage and video designers have more possibilities to work very creative with video content.�

As you can see the Hippotizers are getting a good work-out, being used for such a variety of productions, and we look forward to hearing more about the Muziektheater’s future productions.

 

Youtube channel of the Dutch National Opera:

http://www.youtube.com/user/DeNederlandseOpera

Prigioniero:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3vN0oVjgJc&feature=player_embedded

La Fanciulla del west:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iqtBH5YaMs&feature=player_embedded

Adam in Exile:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-_gskr5c2E&feature=player_embedded