The Israeli Opera House in Tel Aviv has invested in 27 Robe Esprite moving lights after extensive tests and shootouts with a range of products.
International lighting designers and lighting directors are instrumental to the six or seven major productions the opera house stages each season.
Eyal Levi, head of lighting at The Israeli Opera House, worked with his team of three programmers, two chief LX and 10 technicians as well as consultant LDs to select the products.
There were four main criteria on which the luminaires were judged, the first being a good dimming system and the second being accurate shutters which were equally as important.
Colour mixing was also critical. Levi said that this tends to be a subjective category with different LDs having different preferences and opinions, however the Esprite scored consistently well with all LD consultants who were additionally impressed with the range of tuneable whites and the excellent flesh tones produced by the high quality, high CRI output.
He added that the older and original discharge light source moving lights in the house which the Esprites were replacing, sounded “like a bunch of tractors” by comparison. He said this was no disrespect to the manufacturer (not Robe), but it illustrated how far moving light and LED technology had advanced the goalposts in 10 years.
Although they had been using those previous lights for many years, it wasn’t until the Opera House switched to the new LED fixtures that the team appreciated the full impact of reducing the ambient noise emissions.
Technical support was another crucial consideration when picking the brand, and Robe’s distributor, Danor Group, has a good working relationship with the Opera House.
Danor’s Erez Hadar said: “It’s really a great honour for us to get the Esprites into the Opera House and to see them work so well for such a variety of different lighting designers. Robe has focussed on optimising fixtures like Esprite for this exacting and challenging environment, and now all that hard work is now paying off.”
The first post-Covid season at the opera and for the new Esprites was in 2021-22 and The Opera House was pleased with the results.
The lights are rigged in the overhead rig, mainly above the stage of the 1,600-capacity venue, and are controlled via a newly installed grandMA3 console.
Eighty percent of the Opera House’s incoming productions will have their own LD as part of the director’s creative team, and the other 20% are either lit by themselves in-house, or an LD is hired by the Opera House for the project.
Photos: Yossi Zwecker