Philips Selecon's New PLCYC1 LED Premieres at the Royal Opera House's Linbury Studio

	Royal Opera House's Linbury Studio, Covent Garden, for Max Richter's new chamber opera, Sum.

UK lighting designer Lucy Carter has used Philips Selecon's new PLCYC1 LED luminaires to create an evocative environmental design for the Royal Opera House's production of Max Richter's new chamber opera, Sum.

The world premiere was staged in the Royal Opera House's Linbury Studio, Covent Garden. Set inside a specially built room, the audience and performers were arranged on four sides of a centrally located sunken orchestra pit. The room, comprising four high walls each of which feature a built in video screen, are washed throughout with various colors to denote the changing mood and atmosphere of each story.

Carter chose to use sixteen of the newly launched PLCYC1 LED luminaires, supplied by Stage Electrics, to define the mood of each piece as she explains: "I needed a fixture that could give me multiple color choices, wash the walls and the room, but not demand too much space. I discussed the issue with Martin Adams, technical manager of the Linbury, who was co-incidentally testing LED floodlights for the Linbury cyc. He suggested I try the Selecon PLCycs and I was delighted to find I could achieve pretty much any design idea I had. Because I couldn't rig at perfect, even spacing the wide beam angle of the PLCyc1 really helped and worked well together to create a smooth and even wash."

Carter was impressed by the colors the fixtures delivered: "I was interested in the PLCyc LEDs because they offered the option of using cool-white, warm-white, or daylight. I find that only having access to RGB can be a problem because you can't generally get the right white to work with other sources in the rig. Having RGB and white is wonderful, however having the option to select whether you're going to use a cool white or a warm white is even better."

Andrew SJ Grant, Carter's assistant and programmer was equally impressed: "The PLCyc1 LEDs have been fantastic. With 16bit LED dimming, they dim smoothly and mix color very well -- we've achieved some really subtle colors on this show. From a programming point of view they're simple to deal with. Also we haven't needed that many. If you were to try and achieve what Lucy wanted with conventional floodlights, you'd need many more fixtures just to deliver the variety of color washes she wanted. Of course because they're LED they don't burn out color, they don't run hot, and they are a great deal more energy efficient."

"It's fantastic to hear that the new PLCyc1 LEDs are generating such an encouraging response," says Grant Bales-Smith, sales manager for Philips Entertainment in the United Kingdom, Scandinavia, and Benelux. "We're hugely excited about the product and it's technology-rich array of features. It's wonderful to see them being used in such a creative environment and to deliver such a sensitive, though provoking lighting design."