Arizona Opera Moves Forward with Chauvet Professional

When you're a lighting professional you don't go to the opera only to enjoy the soaring music and beautiful set designs, you also can't help but cast an analytical eye on the lighting rig. Peter Nolle, technical director of the Arizona Opera, knows this very well. Visiting an out-of-town opera, Nolle was awed by a star, not on stage, but over the stage, in the form of overhead COLORado 2-Quad Zoom Tour, par-style RGBW LED fixtures from Chauvet Professional.

"I was certainly impressed with these lights," says Nolle. "They were extremely bright and the color temperature looked ideal for an opera setting. As I also learned, they are very easy to use, which is always a big plus."

At the time, Arizona Opera was about to retrofit its incandescent lighting rig, "moving forward" to an LED system. Nolle and William Irwin, IV of Clearwing Productions Phoenix office made the COLORado 2-Quad Zoom Tour fixtures a key part of the new upgraded rig. "William and Clearwing have been invaluable in this process," says Nolle. "CWP did the install of our new space and have been instrumental in helping us in our ongoing movement from incandescent to LED fixtures."

The COLORado 2-Quad Zoom Tours are most often used as at the Arizona Opera as overhead wash lights. Covering the entire stage, the fixtures are typically daisy chained and arranged in three rows. However, they are also used for side lighting and upstage wash lighting.

Featuring color temperature presets from 3,200K - 10,000K, five dimming curves and an 11° to 43° zoom angle, the COLORado 2-Quad Zoom Tours perform well as a beam or a spot even on the same rig, the company says. The Arizona Opera is taking full advantage of this versatility, using the par-style fixtures to illuminate everything from Ruffini's happy love story Don Pasquale (the first production in which the fixtures were used), to Verdi's darkly tragic Rigoletto, to special musical events like "Brown Bag Lunch Recitals."

"A very nice thing about the COLORado 2-Quad Zoom Tours is that they are so versatile," says Nolle. "They are also very easy to install, take down, and transport, which turns out to be very handy for us at the Arizona Opera because we take them off our stage rig and use them as architectural lights when we have parties, events, and fundraisers."

Another thing, Nolle likes about the COLORado fixtures is their low power draw. "Sure these are bright, colorful lights," he says, "but another thing that's very important to us is that they are energy efficient and low maintenance. This is a community oriented opera, so putting on attractive productions for everyone to enjoy and being energy efficient are important to us -- the COLORados help us do both."

See Chauvet Professional at PLASA Focus: Kansas City, May 20 - 21.