Historical crime thriller open air with moving lights

Nibelungen festival in Worms, Germany: It was the first time one of the most famous crime thrillers of world literature was performed open air in front of a huge cathedral featuring stars like actor Mario Adorf and director Dieter Wedel. The story about murder, revenge and betrayal is inspired by the myth of the Nibelungen. Moritz Rinke, one of the most important theatre writers of this age, has provided the actual text for the city of Worms. It was here that Hagen killed Siegfried and Brünhild layed her husband Gunther aside in their wedding night. Standard lighting circumstances (e.g. portal bridge) of a theatre were not provided in Worms. Therefore the lighting designers were forced to let moving lights do the job of conventional theatre lighting. "The lighting was a great challenge for the whole production, as we had to span large spaces and floodlight enormous areas", says Harald Frings, responsible director for the mounting of lighting equipment. "It was not easy to mount the lights for a large stage of 40 by 20 meters. The beautiful cathedral of Worms was to remain visible as background making it impossible to place any back lights there. The only place to hang moving lights were the backs of the stand. However, by doing so, the light from the front fell in a very small angle. Therefore we tried to use the light from the side that reached the stage floor after filtering through the big trees on stage. Also moving lights were placed at the floor aprons." This event saw the efficient support of Lightpower, which supplied the lighting and control equipment. The company supplied 37 Clay Paky Stage Color 1200, 26 Clay Paky Stage Zoom 1200, four Clay Paky Stage Profile Plus SV, eight Vari-Lite VL1000AS, four Vari-Lite VL2416, 21 ETC Source Four Profile, 64 ETC Source Four PAR, two Spotlight Vedette 2500W MSR, six Major 8-Lite Blinder ACL, two Major 6 ACL-Bars, one MA Lighting grandMA, one MA Lighting grandMA replay unit, one Artistic Licence DMX Node, and one MA Lighting Dimmerrack 48 x 2,3 kW. Everything went smoothly during the première on the August 17th, and more than 2000 guests expressed their enthusiasm with standing ovations. Altogether there were 12 performances with more than 26.000 visitors and even today, an encore performance is planned for the following years. General Contractor: KulturTechnik GmbH Director: Dieter Wedel Supervisor: Klaus Naseband Lighting Designer: Ulli Schneider Set Up Lighting: Harald Frings Operator: Sören Neumann Holbeck Set Design: Gerd Friedrich