The Flying Dutchman, a.k.a. Der Fliegende Holländer
By Richard Wagner. Directed by Olivia Stapp, conducted by Alexander Katsman, set design by Jean-François Revon, lighting design by Sean Russell, costume design by Loran Watkins, wig and makeup design by Denise Gutierrez. Produced by Livermore Valley Opera at the Bankhead Theater in Livermore, California, September/October, 2016.
Images were projected on the silver-gray cyclorama behind the set, which comprised two large structures resembling the hull of a wooden ship. Two 8700 lumen projectors with wide angle lenses projected a 46' x 20' image. The overlapping edges of the projected images were feathered together using Isadora and a late 2013-model Macintosh Pro borrowed from West Edge Opera.
The video imagery included ocean footage I photographed on the Sonoma County coast north of Bodega Bay and at the Berkeley Marina, and some clouds I photographed from my back yard. I shot the ocean footage at 60 frames/second; the projections ran at 24 frames/second, so I was able to show the ocean in smooth slow motion when I didn't want it to distract from the action on stage. The still images came from my library and from the Internet. I was surprised to learn after I accepted the assignment that the stage director wanted me to entertain the audience during the overture. For that purpose, I made a 12-minute animation utilizing Studio Artist, a program that analyzes an image and repaints it, and also works with video. The overture is one of the YouTube videos below.
With a cast drawn from the elite ranks of the Bay Area's professional singers and a theatrical production that made canny use of visual projections to supplement the onstage action, this was a performance that focused attention on the essentials of Wagner's dramatic and musical vision. ... The Livermore production, ably directed by Olivia Stapp and graced with evocative projections by Jeremy Knight, brought out all of these currents vividly. Video of the crashing waves served as both a backdrop and a player in the drama, without upstaging Jean-François Revon's economical set design, and the emotional struggles of the characters — particularly the love triangle among Senta, her betrothed Erik and the Dutchman himself — registered with striking immediacy.
—Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle
Jeremy Knight's projections introduced chilly, glittering seascapes and otherworldly glimpses of the Dutchman's red-sailed ship. Less apt was the portrayal of the Dutchman's ghastly shipmates — surely Wagner didn't envision them limping forward like extras from "The Walking Dead" — and a final image of the ship that likewise left audience members scratching their heads.
—Georgia Rowe, San Jose Mercury News
Olivia Stapp's stage direction, the haunting sets of Jean-François Revon, and the multimedia presentations by Jeremy Knight have come together to form a perfect storm of a production, along with an outstanding cast of principals and larger-than-usual chorus and orchestra.
—Sarah Bobson, The Livermore Independent
Rehearsal photographs by Barbara Mallon, Livermore Valley Opera:
Rehearsal photographs by Doug Jorgensen, The Independent:
Images from the projections:
The animation below (Three-minute Sunrise) illustrates the general technique I used for compositing the ocean scenes. There are six layers:
The cloudy night sky (still image)
A peach-colored frame that gradually fades in over the lower layer to "warm up" the nighttime sky
The sunrise sky (still image), with a linear wipe transition, bottom to top, with a feathered edge
A gray-to-transparent gradient at the horizon at 67% opacity, dissolving to peach-to-transparent
The ocean, at 20% velocity, masked at the horizon to allow the lower layers (sky) to be visible
