Power Gems with STS Lighting at Berlin State Opera House

December 5, 2017

On Thursday 7 December, Berlin Opera House will open its doors again to mark the institution’s 275th anniversary. After so many years, it’s a long-awaited opening, and Power Gems were fortunate to get a sneak preview of our ballasts in their new home.

The Staatsoper on Boulevard Unter den Linden has been undergoing major renovations since 2010. Originally planned to reopen four years ago, construction has only just been completed at a cost of EU400 million; a consequence of the scale and ambition of this project which included creating a 115 metre tunnel connecting the main stage and rehearsal centre. All carried out in the centre of a bustling capital city.

Dr Phil Ellams flew over to Berlin days before the Staatsoper was due to open, as work continued up until the last minute, a testament to the complexity of the project and the attention to detail by over 90 different companies and opera staff. He saw the restorers applying gold leaf to the gilded ornamentation (pictured below) and stopped to admire the chandeliers (pictured below), on the way to join Mr Stefan Schmidt, Managing Director of STS Lighting in the more interesting part of the building, the ballast room.

Power Gems has supplied portable and rack mounted ballasts to Staatsoper through STS Lighting; the lighting consultancy based in Gelnhausen, near Frankfurt, are the official dealer for Power Gems in Germany. From the picture you can see the phenomenal density of the 4kW rack ballasts. Each 19” unit carries two 4kW ballasts, optimised for silent operation at the lamp head.

The 19” rack mounted ballasts look perfectly at home amongst the scores of 2.5kW and 5kW dimmer racks, this being just one of several dimmer rooms.

Throughout the project, Stefan (pictured below) has been working with LSS Licht, Steuer und Schaltanlagenbau GmbH, the company responsible for the installation of stage electrics. The visit was an opportunity make any readjustments before the Staatsoper reopens for good, and Phil was quick to roll up his sleeves (pictured) and get busy with the screwdriver to carry out some last-minute checks.

Stefan says: “Power Gems and STS Lighting form a great partnership. We have specialist HMI products for theatre applications, and every day we’re visiting our customers in Germany, Austria and beyond. If we need to call on Power Gems expertise, they’re less than two hours away, by plane.”

Not without controversy, the renovation has attempted to preserve the historic exterior while upgrading the fake Rococo interior to meet the technical demands of modern productions.

The original ceiling (pictured above) of the city’s opera house had to be raised by 5 metres and lined with a ceramic net to improve the acoustics.

Other renovation work includes installing new computer-controlled stage machinery – the whole of the stage floor can descend, in sections, down to a full-height scene dock where it can be loaded for the next scene. In future, there will be a self-driving train from the underground scene dock to the scenery store.

We’re delighted to be involved with such an ambitious and prestigious project.

You can see more photos in Behind the scenes at Berlin’s renovated State Opera House