"The Flying Dutchman" - semi-concertante performance with projection

An entire port tableau opened for Wagner's Flying Dutchman. Still at the dress rehearsal, normal port operations continued with freight trains, cranes, loading and unloading until midnight. Only on Saturday evening peace returned, the work was discontinued in favor of the opera. One sits opposite the city warehouse, between public and actors lies the quiet, rectangular harbor basin, on the left are container mountains, huge cranes flank the tableau. As it gets dark, the spectacular projections onto the warehouse begin on the basis of 3D video mapping. Director and Production Manager Jona Manow and Hauslaib Lichtwelten brought the huge industrial monument to life, shining in all its colors, transforming it completely into a staggering ship, into a kitchen unit, a ship's hull with working gears, into a collection of containers, as they actually are in reality on the left. At the beginning, anchors of the two ships (Daland and Dutch) swing over the whole building and are reflected in the water. With the performance of the Dutchman "Die Frist ist um", the scenery changes into a moving underwater world. Senta's room in Daland's house is domestic: The warehouse looks like it's been covered with yellow dishcloths, other towels hang on hooks. The stairwell on the left turns into a cupboard with cups, bottles, and plates until all the lovely Kitchen Tools explode when Eric appears.

Challenge

One of many challenges in this extraordinary project was due to the fact that two and a half hours of opera had to be filled with projection. The programming of the scenes had to be automated to  match so-called cues (scene change). In collaboration with Jona Manow several large scene images  were created within which there were various animations, which could be accessed via a touch surface with exact timing. In addition, two live video transmissions were synchronized so that the audience sitting 100 meters away could even recognize the singers. All in all a challenging task that was a real pleasure to solve using the Touchdesigner (visual programming interface).