WYSIWYG Lights Andrea Bocelli Concert at the Noto Cathedral

	Andrea Bocelli in Noto Cathedral

With 90 million records sold, Andrea Bocelli is one of the most popular artists of all time, and it was an honor to have Bocelli and Igor Mitoraj's sculptural works as the protagonists of a special evening in Noto to promote Sicilian Unesco sites. WYSIWYG was also honored to be there to help light this concert and its cultural assets as Bocelli's voice filled the piazza in front of the Noto Cathedral in Sicily during a concert held to convey a message of courage and unity among the seven sites recognized by UNESCO in Sicily. The tenor was accompanied by an orchestra and the Teatro Massimo Bellini choir in Catania, directed by Alberto Bartalini.

The event is organized thanks to the financial commitment of the Sicilian Region and the Municipality of Noto. A unique art-in-art event running until February that looks to ignite a focus on Sicily's world-class assets. Massimo Tomasino, a local lighting designer, was asked to be the programmer for Andrea's special event. Not only did Tomasino have the lighting design experience, but he also had experience with architecture, theater, dance, music, and art. This is what this whole event needed.

Tomasino has been a WYSIWYG user since Release 10. From the first time he saw the program, he knew this was the way of his future and investigated further. For Tomasino, WYSIWYG has become an indispensable and go-to tool through the years and used on all of his designs as he works with various Italian artists. Fast forward to today, Tomasino continues to enjoy WYSIWYG R45.

For this concert, it was most important to enhance the five works of Mitoraj positioned on the stairs of the cathedral, the cathedral itself and of course, the star of the show, Bocelli himself. The director, Alberto Bartalini, wanted to see renderings immediately of what the proposed layout and look of the show would be, which Massimo drew up using WYSIWYG. Massimo started to plan a couple of months in advance and imported the cathedral from a Sketchup file with true-to-size measurements, and using a Notebook workstation with two external monitors, connected to another networked computer to stream in video content from a media server. This way, Tomasino was able to see everything he was working with and what he had at his disposal, as he freely moved around the 3D space using a 3D connexion mouse. In order not to obstruct any view of the cathedral, all gear had to be placed on the ground floor.

Once the rig was in place, all pre-programming was done using WYSIWYG and a video rendering was sent to the director to share Tomasino's concept and vision. Bartalini appreciated the ease of using WYSIWYG and loved the fact that he could see results immediately if he asked for changes.

"The most beautiful thing is when I talk about the project and tell artists, directors, or anyone who is part of the production, 'Everything you see in these renderings will be the same.' Someone always laughs in disbelief until they see the virtual programming and their jaws drop. These are the ones who go on after the show telling everyone that all the lighting design was done with virtual pre-programming," says Tomasino.

Using WYSIWYG, Tomasino is confident that the lighting visualization is accurate, especially for the architectural lighting and beam photometrics on the cathedral. It gives him the confidence that his lighting designs will be as he previsualized them once he arrived in Noto a few days before the event.

Tomasino teaches at the University of Palermo where they now offer the WYSIWYG Educational Program for students and faculties. He's found WYSIWYG to be his go-to software for decades and now he can pass the knowledge along to the next generation of Dreamers out there.

Students at the University of Palermo are eager to learn lighting design so they too can design shows like this one for Bocelli. When offered the choice what to do for their final exam, Tomasino has been excited to see many of his students bring a live concert or theater production to him, reiterating his belief that WYSIWYG should be offered in all art schools and academies.