Theatre Design & Technology - May 1968 - 5

USITT's Engineering Committee Looks at the
Winch System in the New Metropolitan Opera

(A meeting of the Engineering Committee of USITT convened at the
Melropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, New York on February 10,
1968 with Bernard Weiss, Committee Chairman, presiding. The follow·
ing is an edited transcript of the proceedings. Editor)

Prof. Fred Buerki addresses USrTI Engineering session (Photo Jay
Keene)

BERNARD WEISS: The Engineering Committee of the Institute, as in the past, has tried to bring before the group any
innovations in rigging systems, mechanical equipment and
lighting equipment. This is an extension of that program.
The Peter Albrecht Corporation was designer, builder and
installer of the Metromatic Loft System used for moving
scenery here at the Metropolitan Opera. There are no counterweights in this house; it is all winch system. We will be
hearing Mr. Paul G. Birkle, President of Peter Albrecht Corporation; Mr. Rudy Kuntner, Chief Electrician and Technical
Director of the Metropolitan Opera House; and Prof. Fred
Buerki, Technical Director at the University of Wisconsin,
where the system was tried out.
DONALD SWINNEY: Speaking for USITI, it has been a
pleasure as Institute members to see various facilities at
Lincoln Center and to be privy to their operation. We, of
course, are extremely interested in this rigging system.
HISTORY: PAUL G. BIRKLE: Peter Albrecht's first contact
with the Metropolitan Opera House was in 1962. The general contractor was trying to find a company in the United
States with American equipment for the hydraulic lifts and
other mechanical equipment at the Opera House. We had
just completed the stage equipment at McCormick Place in
Chicago as a subcontractor for a local elevator company
which had, in 1929 and 1930, done the stage equipment
work for the San Francisco and Chicago Opera Houses.

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A study of the Met's plans indicated to us that the automatic stage fly system was typical of a German opera house.
Our discussions with the general contractor and Mr. Kuntner,
the Met's theatre consultant for mechanical equipment at
that time, concerned whether or not the specifications as
written were exactly what was wanted; as well we wondered
whether we could revamp the specifications to make them
compatible with mechanical and electric equipment available
in the United States. The Metropolitan Opera House wanted
the equipment to be fully motorized. They wanted to take
what was available and had been used in the typical German opera house. The original German specifications called
for a combination motorized·counterwe ight system with the use
of traction drive and clutches to move the scenery. This system required shifting counterweights when there was an extreme inbalance of flown scenery.
We thought that if money was to be spent on an electric
system, the system should be completely automatic to obtain better control and to completely eliminate sllifting counterweights. As a consequence, we inspected most of the
motorized installations already in use in the United States,
comparing them with the automatic fly system we had installed at McCormick Place. At each of these installations
we found similar problems: Inaccuracy of repeating batten set
heights; slowness of batten speed and poor speed control;
poor synchronization of movement with more than one set;
insufficient load capacity of the batten; inability to run sufficient battens at one time; unavailability of replacement
parts and maintenance manuals; and general unreliability resulting from mechanical and electrical failures.
Believing that all of these problems could be reduced, we
prepared performance criteria for an automatic system at the
Met, and then met with the technicians of the Opera House
to compare the performance criteria with daily back-stage activity. We next formulated performance specifications, and to
make the written specifications clearer we drew up a pictorial representation of the entire system's capabilities.
It was also necessary to build models of the control console
and the patching system which would allow the Met's technicians physically to run through sequencing the equipment
for a typical opera. There was early skepticism about patching direct current motors and control systems.
By this time, as stage machinery designer I was confident
enough of my design and performance criteria that we were
willing to install a prototype at no cost to the Met, on the
condition that if this prototype did not perform to specifications, we would be subject to contract cancellation.
Then we made a search for a theatre which could be used
to install and test the proposed electric fly system. The
theatre had to have a gridiron high enough for use of an
overhead rigging system similar to what was proposed at
the new Opera House. We decided on the Union Theatre at
the University of Wisconsin, which had an active theatre

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