Pfaff-Silberblau Keeps Action Alive at Hamburg’s Neue Flora

This month we head to Germany to look at an extensive winch application in the Neue Flora, one of Europe’s largest musical theaters located in Hamburg.

Stage technology specialists from Pfaff Silberblau were involved in the renovation of the Neue Flora to upgrade the fly machinery to a new state-of-the-art technology.  At that time Pfaff delivered 34 electrical wire rope winches used for the various scene changes along with a computerized control system. In the installation, there were 27 winches with a 900 kg capacity and 7 winches with a 1000 kg capacity.

For the Walt Disney Musical TARZAN, the Neue Flora had new requirements.  They installed additional customized electrical wire rope winches in their newly arranged FlyGrid. Each of these winches had to be installed very securely above the stage as they are used for supporting and quickly changing the set and the structures on the stage as necessary. Each one of the centrally controlled winches lifts a max weight of 900 kilograms. Also worth noting is the traveling speed of up to 9.8 ft/sec (3m/sec), which is much greater than the standard 3.9 ft/sec (1.2m/sec).

This installation includes a complete, computerized, control system developed by Fulling & Partner GmbH. The FlyGrid system was the chosen solution for the Tarzan musical since a lot of the action takes place above the heads of the audience, when Tarzan and Jane are swinging through “the jungle”.

Many thanks to our CMCO office located in Velbert, Germany and our sales team at Pfaff-Silberblau for providing this interesting entertainment application story.