During 2025 we visited the Royal Ballet & Opera in London several times throughout the year, following the revival of The Nutcracker during the Upgrade Project.
The Royal Opera House in London is a world-renowned venue that dates all the way back to 1732. It is sometimes referred to simply as Covent Garden because of how the site was used before the first theatre, Theatre Royal, appeared here.
The Royal Opera House has been rebuilt twice following devastating fire. The third and current building, which still stands today, opened in 1858. Although the building has undergone several improvements over the past 80 years, the main auditorium has remained unchanged since its reopening in 1946.
The building is grade one listed, which means that strict regulations govern any alterations made to it.
With the Upgrade Project a major refurbishment of the lighting rig was carried out, replacing large amounts of tungsten lights with new LED lights. The previous workhorses of the rig, a large mount of profiles mounted on yokes, with scrollers and snoots attached, were replaced with modern LED-based moving heads.
During the changeover, which was carried out while the theatre was still in full operation, both the old and new lights were present in parallel for some time.
While Capture already played a vital role in the daily operation of the lighting department, the Upgrade Project pushed the envelope of its use even further. With only one or two technical days and handful of rehearsals before each show goes live, the team has grown increasingly dependent on visualisation.
In the Royal Ballet & Opera's visualisation suite, 3D models are brought to life in Capture with an incredible attention to detail. The realism of the visualisation, in no small part due to the quality of the models and texturing - which even includes the auditorium - gives lighting designers the confidence they need to do much of the work virtually.