Before returning to the recently inaugurated Astana Opera Theatre in Kazakhstan for a production of Swan Lake, then on to Beijing for Il Trovatore (the eighth production on which he has worked at the National Centre for the Performing Arts), Italian projection designer Sergio Metalli was recently in Rome to work on one of the few projects he will be involved in this year in his home country.
Oceano Adriatico (Adriatic Ocean) was staged for the annual Esperimenti di Quaresima (Lent Experiments) event by the Alda Fendi Foundation, written and directed by Raffaele Curi, with a segment on Dante’s dream by three-time Oscar and BAFTA winner Dante Ferretti.
This year’s Esperimenti di Quaresima moved from its habitual venue, Rome’s old Jewish fish market, to another original location, Theatre 8 at the Eternal City’s legendary De Paolis film studios, and the show is a trip from the '50s to the present day, including the dreams and memories of a boy who doesn’t have the money to go to the open-air cinema screening of Federico Fellini’s I Vitelloni but later becomes one of the world’s top scenographers. There are several references to Fellini, who was also born on the Adriatic coast, as were Metalli, Ferretti, and Curi.
The audio, lighting, and video contractor for the show was Rome’s Madema, who supplied Metalli a projection setup comprising of four Eiki 16K and two Sanyo 12K projectors on a main 65'x25' screen/backdrop, with two more Sanyo 15K units projecting on the theatre’s side walls. Eight Panasonic 50' plasma monitors were also installed along either side of the audience, all standing and surrounded by 80 oil drums with "Adriatic Water" written on them.
Among the content produced by Metalli for this dreamlike view of the past was a lamb, which was the symbol of a popular '50s brand of Italian soap powder (Lauril), followed across the screen by row after row of packets of the detergent. The virtual ocean, on which a liner similar to the Rex (the huge liner in Fellini’s Amarcord) sailed, was populated by a real-life mermaid character and myriad virtual jellyfish, which were transformed into hot-air balloons floating skyward.
Three kids try to watch I Vitelloni from outside the walls of an open-air summer cinema, for which Metalli processed original footage to adapt it to the unusual projection format. Their view is obstructed by a '50s Fiat pickup that drives through the audience and across the stage. As the view from the windows of a train travelling up the Adriatic coast to Ravenna flew past on the main screen, the stations’ names appeared on the side projections.
At another point in the show, a luminous dot on the screen became larger and larger until spectators could clearly distinguish the Holy House of Loreto, which, according to Catholic tradition, was miraculously transported by angels from Nazareth and laid on a hilltop covered with laurel trees. In sharp contrast to this image of the Adriatic (Loreto is one of the world’s most revered Marian shrines), two cages were flown from the roof with dancers inside and a pair of large mirror balls, symbolizing Rimini’s fame as one of Europe’s '70s/80s disco capitals.
Adriatic Ocean
Metalli, whose projection design and virtual scenery work has been applauded worldwide through the years, particularly by audiences in the most famous opera theatres, but also in less conventional venues, such as the ex-De Paolis studios and the Jewish fish market, took a four-man team from his company, Ideogamma, to Rome: his son Mattia, a digital FX specialist who has followed his father’s footsteps since an early age (when just 17, he was the country’s youngest Avid editing station operator); graphic designers Giacomo Delucca and Beniamino Maestri; and Dataton Watchout op Pierluigi Pinna.
The Ideogamma team manned three six-core SSD HDTV players, each with four video outputs, running Dataton Watchout software for the playout of video content. Metalli explains, "One was used with the plasma monitors, one with the side wall projections and two of the main screen units, and the third for the remaining four projectors on the main screen."
The setup was completed with a render farm (four quad-core PCs); a six-Terabyte NAS server with RAID5; two six-core graphic servers with editing, compositing, and 3D software for on-site image tweaking; and an audio player that sent the soundtrack feed to the audio team.
Sound engineer Lorenzo Mannocci manned a Midas 240 console and sound reinforcement comprised 20 JBL VerTec 4888 DP (two main hangs of six elements and two delay hangs with four elements each), plus eight JBL VerTec 4880 subwoofers on the floor along the stage front, powered by four Crown 5002 amplifiers. Two Meyer Sound MSL4 Meyer monitors were installed on stage for the performers.
LD Massimiliano Fusco helmed an MA Lighting grandMA2 console to control the rig, the majority of which was made up of moving head fixtures: 22 Clay Paky Alpha Spot HPE 700s, 20 Clay Paky Alpha Wash 700s, 10 Clay Paky Sharpy fixtures, 17 DTS Nick Wash units, and four High End Systems X-Spot profiles. Conventionals included 10 Arri 1kW Fresnels and 12 ETC Source Four 25°-50° zoom profiles, while two Robert Juliat Ivanhoe 2.5kW followspots, seven Martin Professional Atomic 3000 Strobes, and three Arri 12x3kW dimmers were also used.
In the finale, the dreamlike atmosphere continued, with the arrival of winter on the ocean shore: an elderly lady on stage turned her back on the audience, opened her umbrella, and walked away under the snow, which began to fall softly on the audience.
After the last night, Metalli enthused, "Even if my work takes me all over the world, this show, with such close ties with my home town [Rimini, Italy] and its sea, was particularly enjoyable and gratifying from both a professional and personal point of view."
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