Excerpts from the June 20th, 2010 performance. Credits below.
When it comes to opera appreciation, I’m among the under-educated. However, the performance of Lucia di Lammermoor put on by the 2010 Green Mountain Opera Festival at the Barre Opera House on June 20th impressed me. While I may not understand the language of opera (Italian in this case), I found there were enough other elements to convey the story. Sure, there were supertitles (projected above the stage in English), but since I was videotaping the performance, I focused on the nuanced performances of the artists, the music, lighting, and set design. Perhaps it was the Scottish setting of Lucia di Lammermoor that had me intrigued. Really, it was the top-flight talent I witnessed on stage.
Rather than review the show here, I’d like to document the particular challenges of shooting opera. As I attended the dress rehearsal of Lucia, I recognized that the festival’s artistic director, Taras Kulish, had clearly assembled many talented individuals for the performance. With the available resources, I then set out to record an archive of the show that would do it justice.
For sound I consulted Jeff Cooper of CooperAV. He rented me a nice stereo pair of Nakamichi CP4 shotgun mics, which yielded very pleasant results. I flew them up about 8ft on a stand in the back of the house and directed them each just off center stage. I was concerned about bounce-back from the overhanging balcony, but at “Coop’s” suggestion I kept the mics 18 inches away from the ceiling. In the end, the acoustics of the Barre Opera House played a big role in the sound quality. Aside from a few bits of external traffic noise, the space was good for sound recording.
From the video highlight reel above, you can see I ran two cameras. The wide shot was a locked down Sony Z1U rented from Arnie Wetherhead of Wetherhead Productions. The principal camera was my Sony Z5U on a Miller Solo DV10. Both HDV cameras matched very well in post, as they required no color grading. The dramatic, beautiful theater lighting made for great images, but the low light in a few scenes prevented me from zooming in too much. The Z5U loses a few Fstops of light as I zoom, so I had to carefully watch those changes. Everything was shot manually, including the iris, zoom and focus, which each have a lens ring control on the Z5U (love that).
Chorus members:
Andrea Bangemann-Johnson
Dana Dean
Ann Fitch
Deborah Fontes
Federicka Velutini- Hoffman
Stefanie Weigand
Chloe Fairbanks
Dawn Fairbanks
Carol Kendrick
Felicity Swayze
Robert S. Emmons
William Pelton
Marvin Rogers
Peter DeFausse
Rick Rayfield
Jose Schmidt
Sandy Stephen