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Corona: Fredrik Jonsson selects Astera for Malmö Opera’s “Funny Girl”

Sweden’s Malmö Opera presented a production of musical classic “Funny Girl” as part of the autumn/winter 2020 repertory programme which continued to run despite the pandemic. Audience figures were reduced to 50 (in a 1232 seat auditorium) plus a livestream which could be enjoyed by all who had bought a ticket for each performance.

Planned two years earlier and fully sold out many months in advance, Malmö Opera decided to go ahead in delivering all their seasonal main house productions as the budgets were already allocated and spent. Swedish lighting designer Fredrik Jonsson was delighted to be back working on a live show and helping to create the aesthetic for this production.

Malmö Opera has a quantity of Astera fixtures in its lighting inventory which are used for multiple situations and solutions across their range of productions, and Fredrik Jonsson used the Astera AX3 LightDrops to highlight important details on the “Funny Girl” sets designed by Martin Chocholousek.

Ten AX3s were hidden behind custom golden shell casings that emulated classic 1930’s Ziegfeld Follies era footlights in line with period setting of the piece. The AX3s were attached magnetically to metallic plates behind the plastic shell shapes, slightly angled up to authentically simulate footlights coming from the orchestra pit area.

Jonsson added some AX3s inside the two large ventilation funnels of the battleship set to highlight the interior of the funnel ends and give these more prominence. AX3s positioned in the bottom of the ventilation tubes allowed him to achieve a highlight in the bend at the top of the funnel which faced the audience.

More AX3s were utilised on a chandelier that sat on the floor for the first scene at Nicky Arnstein’s mansion. The furniture and chandelier were covered in white ‘dust sheets’. These were removed after a while by the chorus, and the chandelier lit up as they launched into “Sadie, Sadie”, the musical number that follows. All these AX3s were controlled through the Operas’ main GrandMA lighting console.

(Photos: Malin Arnesson/Malmö Opera och Musikteater AB)

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