Vienna State Opera installs 70 Solawash 1000 High CRI

The Vienna State Opera has replaced its 20-year-old Amptown Washlights with 70 SolaWash 1000 High CRI from High End Systems. The exchange was a challenge, as the new LED spotlights must be able to reproduce the characteristic old-fashioned light qualities of their predecessors and illuminate new productions in a contemporary way.
The State Opera House has almost 200 repertoire pieces in its program and the spotlights are in use for almost every piece.

Robert Eisenstein, Vice-Director of Lighting at the Vienna State Opera, speaks about the decision: “We had the pleasure of getting our hands on the first SolaWash 1000 in Austria. Together with Preworks and ETC, we were able to realize this project professionally, by implementing our own program. Many companies presented us with a spotlight and offered to make the necessary changes by hand. With almost 200 performances and no rehearsal days available, this would have been an impossible undertaking in terms of time”.

The solution was developed together. Eisenstein explains: “Over the past year and a half, we worked with Preworks and ETC to write a great program that gives the new SolaWash 1000 the exact data of the old Amptown Washlight. It must mix color values in the same way as its 20-year-old predecessor. We determined values, color values and position values.

Of course, we also had to reduce the intensity because the new spotlight is much brighter, in spite of its far lower power consumption thanks to LED technology. The biggest challenge was reproducing the color mix of the old fixture in the new fixture. We are talking about countless parameters that have to be processed.
The tests went very well! We are convinced that we have found the best solution and hope that everything works as we envisioned it. If new productions are on the program, we will of course use the fixture with all the functions it offers”.