Background

The Committee to Restore the Opera House retained theater and audio visual consultants Auerbach + Associates of San Francisco to oversee the renovation and redesign of the technical infrastructure of the War Memorial Opera House. Auerbach + Glasow, the architectural lighting design division of Auerbach + Associates, was also retained to design the renovation of the chandelier and other auditorium lighting elements.

Auerbach + Associates worked closely with the San Francisco Opera and the San Francisco Ballet to design and develop new stage lighting systems, backstage communications and sound systems, and stage rigging and controls that will serve both the Opera and the Ballet.

The Main Chandelier

The six-tier chandelier is 25 feet in diameter and 14 feet tall from its bottom to the ceiling. The framework is part of the original building steel. The decorative elements are solid cast aluminum attached to the steel frame. The lower 3 tiers - weighing a total of 300 pounds drop to the floor for relamping. The rest of the chandelier is relamped from inside by crawling down an access ladder from the ceiling.

The original chandelier was designed and installed by Roberts Manufacturing Company of San Francisco, Oakland, and Los Angeles. Roberts also fabricated the decorative tiers that bolted onto the frame. The original chandelier had approximately 540 bulbs. The original bulbs were standard basic service A lamps.

When the War Memorial Opera House opened in 1932, the San Francisco Call described "a ceiling of solid blue, illumined by hidden lights, clasped to its bosom the bright star-like jewel of a great chandelier." By 1989, the once-beautiful chandelier was dull and lifeless and the solid blue ceiling had faded to muted gray. Lighting tests conducted by Auerbach + Glasow in 1994 revealed that the light levels in the auditorium had deteriorated dramatically - by a factor of 10 - below the specifications in the original lighting design plans. Auerbach + Glasow also discovered that a major element of the chandelier - a system of uplights at the top - had been mysteriously removed sometime in the past.

The first step in renovation was cleaning off sixty-five years of accumulated grime from the exterior of the chandelier. The renovation of the chandelier included restoration of the uplights and the complete gutting and recircuiting of the interior. New lift-out socket assemblies were designed to ease relamping in the cramped interior.

The chandelier's circuits are connected to new architectural dimmers located in the same dimmer room as the theatrical dimmers. The dimmers will provide full voltage at the socket for the first time in many years. The refitted chandelier has forty-four 350 watt T4 lamps in asymmetric throw uplights; five-hundred and sixty 90 watt halogen A lamps in the four upper tiers and twenty-one 50 watt halogen A lamps in the lower two tiers. The total wattage load is 66,850 watts.

The restored chandelier will increase the overall lighting level in the auditorium by nine times the level that was in place prior to restoration. Everything will look better and brighter to the audience.

Consultants

Lighting Design: Auerbach + Glasow, a division of Auerbach + Associates, Inc., S. Leonard Auerbach, ASTC, President; Larry French, IALD, MIES, Project Designer; Diane Waschow, ASTC, Project Manager.Fabrication and Installation: Taylor Stokes, Sausalito