ETC´s Eos family controls international Aix-en-Provence Festival

ETC’s flagship Eos range of lighting consoles have been selected to run all three venues of the internationally acclaimed Festival International d'Art Lyrique d'Aix-en-Provence in the south of France. 

Continuing its success in the French market, over a hundred Eos family consoles have been installed in France so far, with this number continuing to rise. The technical team at the art and music festival, stage an average of five operas a year, bringing expertise, speed and efficiency to the event. They have run the entire event on the Eos brand with nine consoles used across the three main venues in the city of Aix-en-Provence.

Chief Electrician, Jean-Pascal Gauchais selected ETC for the quality of its products, award-winning color tools and the consoles’ ability to handle all types of luminaires, both traditional and automated.

"Thanks to ETC evolving its product range, it has been possible for us to program using Eos console desks on our budget,” comments Jean-Pascal. "The philosophy of consoles in tracking mode is an element that I particularly like, it is really convenient in the programming of the shows. When deciding on which console to use, we recognized that Eos was the best and most effective choice as we had worked with it previously in several large opera houses. We ran the festival last year and had great support from ETC and dealer Texen, with Philippe Roy - Field Project Coordinator at ETC France - who provided great assistance during that time.” 

In addition to the Eos consoles, there were a total of 44 Source Four fixtures, 36 Source Four PARs, 32 ColorSource PARs and 22 High End Systems’ SolaWash 2000s positioned across the city as part of the festival.

The first venue of the annual festival, Théâtre de l'Archevêché, received a set of three Eos family console desks: a flagship Eos Ti for programming in the auditorium during rehearsal, a Gio @5 for the set as well as an Ion Xe Remote Processor Unit (RPU) system with an Eos Programming Wing.

“ETC’s consoles work together reliably and efficiently as a complete system. By default, the Eos Ti is a remote control of the RPU system. We ran tests prior to the set up during which cables were pulled out, and the Eos Ti instantly took control without any faults or changes to the show,” remarks the Chief Electrician. 

A similar set up was completed at the next two venues – Grand Théâtre de Provence which ran on an Eos Ti, Gio @5 and Ion Xe 20 and the Jeu de Paume Theater with Eos, Ion Xe 20 and an Ion Xe console desk as back up. "The lighting operators are especially delighted with the arrival of Eos and the new features they have discovered, such as the "Undo" button, a sort of Ctrl + Z that allows you to go back to the previous state of the lighting show.”

During the creation phase, an ETCnomad was used to complete the planning of the lighting showcase. “One of the events at the festival made significant use of live screens and the video operator chose to use his own Eos interface from a laptop to create color consistency between the video screens and the board. This is where ETCnomad was particularly useful, allowing us to have additional control, and program the shows from any location with just a USB key,” says Jean-Paul.

“The lighting control of the productions in all three venues worked smoothly together thanks to ETC’s Eos family of control. A strong team effort was vital in combining the festival light shows, specialist networks and scenic materials to ensure the whole festival was a success,” adds Jean-Paul Gauchais.