Lighting designer for this prestigious event was Emil Koller from Sali Trade. The company is Robe's Croatian distributor and also has a rental operation that was responsible for supplying the festival's full technical package including lighting and sound. The project was managed for Sali Trade by Admir Shehu.

Koller specified Robe because he needed a versatile moving light 'base' for the 3 different performances - Swan Lake, Bolero and Carmen - all of which had very different lighting and atmospheric requirements and were performed by the Imperial Russian Ballet from Moscow.

He utilised 14 x Robe ColorWash 575E AT Zooms and 9 x Robe ColorSpot 575E ATs, together with 4 x REDBlinder 2●96s, and a Robe Fog 1500 FT to create very understated haze effects.

All the lighting fixtures were hung on trusses flown below the 18 x 14 metre Prolyte stage roof which was installed for the occasion. They were positioned on front, mid and rear trusses for the best possible stage coverage.

Koller's production design was to a drawn up to a demanding brief and had to cover three completely different works. He really used the flexibility and dynamics of the Robes to the maximum, making extensive use of the full colour range and also the gobos. These were used sparingly and in keeping with the aesthetics and subtleties of the different performances. "I knew that using Robe would guarantee me the creative scope, quality and reliability I needed" says Koller, adding that he thinks Robe moving lights are ideal for large scale theatrical style applications like this because of their full feature sets and quiet operation.

He programmed and ran all the lighting off a Zero 88 Frog2 console.

The design and lighting of the 2009 Histriafestival has won much critical acclaim and also impressed the various audiences. Koller concludes, "It was a great honour to be involved in such a high profile event. the design involved lots of attention to detail andI needed lots of basic lighting building blocks so I could build more complex layers of effects and specials on top of them. The Robes were an absolutely brilliant tool for the job".