A spectacular anniversary | May 2019 | LSi

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A spectacular anniversary Durham Marenghi talks to LSi about his three decades of lighting Classical Spectacular at London’s Royal Albert Hall . . .

[UK] In 1989, when he was asked to submit ideas for lighting Raymond Gubbay’s new series of classical music concerts at the Royal Albert Hall (RAH), lighting designer Durham Marenghi’s rock and roll approach to the design won him the gig. His highly colourful, energetic lighting creation - along with the indispensable pyrotechnics (by Lincoln Parkhouse and his team at JustFX) and lasers (from Definitive Special Projects) - has been the visual hallmark of this popular concert series ever since.

“Some purists said we shouldn’t do that with classical music, that it should be played in the sort of antiseptic, white-lit ambience that people were used to,” recalls Marenghi. “But a lot of this music was written for large military or Royal events; they were outdoor spectacles with a visual element. The client, having seen rock and roll technology, wanted to add lighting, lasers and pyro to make it a real ‘classical spectacular’.”

The bold character of this modern-day pageant has not changed enormously in 30 years, although the toolkit certainly has.

Technology has delivered many changes - in lighting instruments, control systems and previsualisation. “We have always tried to stay at the cutting edge of technology, but not the bleeding edge,” says Marenghi.

“We started with an all-PAR can rig,” he says, “I forget how many - probably 150 or so. I operated on a Celco Gold. Later we moved on to Vari-Lites and the Artisan controller, with the VL1, then the VL2. We skipped the VL3 - didn’t like it much - then the VL4, VL5 and VL6. We also had LSD Icons for a time, with the Icon desk. We used Coemar NATs too . . . Eventually, we moved on to a fully automated system, controlled by a grandMA2.”

Among the significant technological milestones, Marenghi also points to WYSIWYG. “In the early days, we had to rent an arena in the Docklands to preprogramme the show. We set the whole system up there, marked out the orchestra on the floor with gaffer tape and preprogrammed everything in the real world.”

Fortunately, new technology rendered (literally) that expense unnecessary.

“WYSIWYG mirrored the introduction of moving lights, so we were able to preprogramme in the comfort of a hotel room or a WYG studio. That had a massive impact on what we could do on this show, and the number of cues we were able to put in to it.”

Amid this richly coloured moving light spectacle, it’s tempting to think that the highly trained classical musicians are treated with great sensitivity. “No, we throw the full kitchen sink at them!” says

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“Your lighting was the star of the event. If you could turn music into light, then that’s exactly what you did . . .”

- Dan Jones Marenghi. “They have quite bright music stands, and we try to prepare them in rehearsal for the lighting effects they’re going to be working under. And, of course, we try to make sure we’re not dazzling them.”

Another lighting imperative is to ensure that the conductor is always brightly lit, and it’s here that Marenghi reveals a vestigial remnant of that first 1989 rig. “We still have two PAR cans on the rig, in case the worst happens and we have a system failure. We can carry on the show with the PAR cans on the conductor.”

Rock and roll lighting can catch out the unwary classicist, however. Marenghi recalls one occasion on which a Spanish music theme was lit with plenty of red.

“Unfortunately, the conductor had written his notes in red ink, so they all disappeared.

He wasn’t very happy.”

B From top: Lighting looks from the 2018, 2002 and 1993 editions of Classical Spectacular at the Royal Albert Hall

C 2009’s show; Lighting designer, Durham Marenghi

The lighting pays almost as much attention to the audience and the iconic architecture of the RAH as it does to the orchestra on the stage. “It’s very immersive,” agrees Marenghi. “There are a lot of aerial effects, up into the architecture of the building.

We also use a lot of the architectural lighting on the columns and the corona and add that into our mix as well. And with lighting the audience, we put a lot of pans into those moves so that people are never sat in static lights.”

The advent of the Claypaky Sharpy in 2011 was “a major introduction,” says Marenghi. Later, the Sharpy Wash provided extra versatility, with its ability to go from beam to flood. Subsequent products from Claypaky, including the Scenius, Mythos and Unico, have also made their mark. “The Scenius, with the new Osram lamp, made a massive difference,” says Marenghi. “The optics are great. There’s a star field gobo which we can get so pin-sharp, we use it in the 1812 Overture to represent the snow of the Russian winter; with all the Scenius in the roof, we let them slowly drift down the audience. It’s quite mesmerising, and we can only do that because of the optics.”

The RAH is a deceptive room. “It appears a very intimate show space,” says Marenghi, “but in fact the throw distances involved are substantial. The Scenius and Mythos handle these kinds of throws with ease and actually, for some audience effects, we have to dial them down quite a lot.”

LED sources on the rig are currently limited to truss toners, although Marenghi sees a time when that will change. “For now, we’re sticking with discharge sources,” he says. “I’m only using LEDs for anything that stays away from skin. But there are some great LED fixtures out there now and, obviously, we will move into that eventually.”

Over the years, as well as the RAH shows, Classical Spectacular toured arenas in the UK, Europe and Australia. In that time, it has been seen by over three million people with around one and a half million at

the RAH alone. More than 100 technicians have played their part in bringing those shows and tours to life. They include two of the industry’s best-known Swedes: on one tour in Norway, the crew included fork lift driver Ola Melzig (now familiar to readers of LSi as the technical director for the Eurovision Song Contest) and lighting technician Fredrik Jönsson (now a successful lighting designer with Eurovision 2013 and 2016 on his extensive résumé).

Marenghi’s visual interpretation of the popular classical canon has proved a winning formula for three decades, impressing promoter, audiences and musicians alike. Here’s a comment from composer Dan Jones, who wrote to Marenghi: “I just wanted to say your lighting was the star of the event. If you could turn music into light, then that’s exactly what you did - and I don’t say that lightly as a composer. Extraordinary timing and a palette the likes of which I don’t think I’ve ever seen.”

In its 30th anniversary year, the Classical Spectacular lighting rig continues to use WYSIWYG previsualisation and grandMA2 control, and to provide room for a new generation of lighting professionals to learn their craft under Marenghi’s experienced eye. The show, with lighting now supplied by rental company LCR, programmed by Ryan Hopkins with show operation by Pedro Marcé Socias, looks set to run for many years to come. I WWW.LSIONLINE.COM • MAY 2019

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