Lulu

TASK

With a silent film according to the original version and further video elements, the stage design of the opera "Lulu" was to be digitized and support the narration dramaturgically.

The Dutch director Lotte de Beer staged Alban Berg's "Lulu" with libretto after Frank Wedekind at the Leipzig Opera. The piece was performed in 2018 to mark the anniversary celebrations of "325 Years of Opera in Leipzig."

Already in Alban Berg's original version, a silent film is provided between two scenes to introduce a turning point in the tragedy. While such a stylistic device meant an immense effort in the early 20th century, this should not be quite such a challenge for today's video technology in the theater.

In addition to the cinematic presentation, the haptic stage design was also to be supplemented by video projections.

SOLUTION

The MXWendler FXServer with the StageDesigner FX software provided the technical requirements for a digital stage set consisting of film, video and text recordings.

The silent film, based on Alban Berg's original, was produced by the video artist duo "fettFilm" and became the central artistic stylistic device of the production. With the help of Leipzig Opera's XX Head FXServer, the film was projected onto a large screen in the center of the stage. The dramaturgical significance of the medium was to provide information about the background of the protagonist "Lulu" and to introduce the turning point of the narrative.

In addition, projections were made on up to 8 smaller moving screens, whose arrangement varied from scene to scene. The StageDesigner mapping tool allowed the output of the three projectors to be mapped for each scene according to the new arrangement of the projection screens. In the playlist, the different mappings were set as cues so that they adjusted automatically for the corresponding scene.

In the playlist, freely formatted texts were also designed in the form of custom text cues, independent of the video and image content, and placed in the line of the corresponding mapping. The text cues were excerpts from Frank Wedekind's stage play, which he had created from his two tragedies "Pandora's Box" and "Earth Spirit". With the help of these text recordings, the underlying narrative could be linked even more strongly with the opera presented.

Above all, however, it was through the projected videos and images that director de Beer deepened the narrative of the opera. On the one hand, the medium in this way conveyed to the audience a flashback to Lulu's past and, on the other, the many locations and time jumps in the plot. A theoretically gigantic stage set could be created with comparatively little effort using MXWendler video technology.

Applications

FXServer
Multi-Monitor-Configuration
EDID Management

StageDesigner-FX
Keystone
Playlist

Credits

Ulf Schirmer (Lead)
Lotte de Beer (Director)
Alex Brok (Stage)
Jorine van Beek (Costumes)
fettFilm (Video)
Matthias Bormann (Videotechnics)