BARCO Displays Grand Images during Hector Berlioz' "Damnation de Faust" at the Salzburg Festival

The Salzburg Festival is the most known annual music and theater event worldwide. For almost 80 years, this event has been attracting thousands of visitors from all over the world. The 1998 edition was visited by 234,000 people and the organizers expected this year’s edition to be even better.

From 24 July to 29 August, 10 new productions were announced, including Luciano Berios’ " Cronaca del Luogo ", Ferruccio Busoni’s " Doktor Faust ", Mozart’s " Don Giovanni ", etc. Furthermore, Mr. Gerard Mortier, Artistic Director of the Festival, and the other members of the board of directors decided to revamp the staging of opera productions by combining opera with advanced audio-visual technology.

On Thursday 19 August 1999, the catalonian theater group " La Fura dels Baus " premiered Hector Berlioz’ "Damnation de Faust" in the ‘Felsenreitschule’ in Salzburg. During this opera production, high brightness video and data images were projected on a huge cylindrical screen in the middle of the stage, allowing show designers to create a dynamic show by continuously changing the settings.

For the projection of these images the organizers selected the BARCO-technology. At the live staging of opera productions such as Puccini’s " La Bohème " (February 1997) and Verdi’s " Rigolleti " (January 1998) and " Il Trovatore " (October 1998) BARCO had already shown that culture and highly advanced technology could be combined. Now, the Salzburg Festival and BARCO cooperated on a new event bringing culture to a large audience. BARCO supplied BarcoData 9200 LCD-projectors. Based on an innovative high efficiency optical system with high performance 1,800 W metal-halide lamp, the system delivers images with an extremely high light output of 6,000 lumens.

In order to display the images on the cylindrical screen, four BarcoData 9200 LCD-projectors with high quality lenses were installed in two projection rooms, located at both sides of the stage and at a distance of 23.5 meters from the screen. Both rooms included specially developed pedestals, allowing the projectors to be installed at a height of 3 meters and 9 meters. During the production the projectors were, however, not only used for displaying the various settings – the eclipse, fire, light, horses, falling objects, human beings, … - on the cylindrical screen in the middle of the stage. The units were also used as spot- and searchlights, showing another opportunity for using high brightness projection systems in this kind of applications.

"The premiere of "Damnation de Faust" was a huge success, said Regina Wohlfahrt, Head of the Press Office at the Salzburg Festival. "It was the first time we combined theater with video projection technology. As we always try to reach the highest possible quality level, all components of the event have to reach that same high level of quality. We selected the BARCO-technology because of its high brightness, extreme user-friendliness and flexibility, making it possible to realize this kind of futuristic applications. BARCO really offered us the perfect solution to make our dreams come through. It made visitors stare at the show open-mouthed."

If you wish for digital pictures regarding this event, please contact Saskia Vermeiren at saskia.vermeiren@barco.com

The Barco Group has six strategic activities: Barco Graphics, Barco Projection Systems, Barco Display Systems, Barco Communication Systems, Barco Automation and Barco Machine Vision. These six key activities deliver turnover of more than BEF 26 billion (EUR 655 million). More than 90% of this is realized outside Belgium. The Barco Group has a network of subsidiaries, distributors and agents in 97 countries throughout the world. Barco has been quoted on the Brussels Bourse since 1986. Barco is a BEL 20 company. You can find more information about Barco on the Web: http://www.barco.com.

For more information, please contact

JP Tanghe
Senior Advisor to the CEO - Compliance Officer
Barco nv

Telephone +32 56/26 23 22
jp.tanghe@barco.com