Vienna’s Marx Halle bristled with excitement for the 2025 Amadeus Austrian Music Awards, a BIG and super glamorous night out for the Austrian music industry, staged by IFPI Austria, to recognize outstanding achievements by Austrian artists and musicians.

No less standing out than the occasion itself was an eye-catching production lighting for the event created by Manfred Nikitser who incorporated 8 x Robe SVOPATT LED fixtures into his design in this unique venue.

Broadcast live on national television channel ORF, the 2025 event further celebrated 25 years of the Awards, stepping up from a theatre venue to this larger former industrial space right at the heart of the city’s event scene, which also upped the production values.

Manfred, lighting the Awards for the fourth time, wanted a strong, spectacular backlight feature for the 11 show-stopping live performances taking place in between the 14 Awards being handed out, and thought the SVOPATTs would be perfect for the job!

In part, this decision was prompted by the interesting aesthetics of the fixture, a static multi-source LED product with nine individual modules, each containing 7 x 40W RGBW multichips and a centre pixel with a retina-popping 200W white LED strobe.

Generating over 75.000 lumens (integrating sphere), Manfred was certainly not short of brightness for creating the slick, provocative powerful, low-rise back lighting style he wanted in the unique environs of this vast space, which was once a cattle shed.

The set and lighting design was a collaboration between Manfred who took care of both these disciplines and director Lukas Dudzik. Manfred has also been lighting director on four previous Amadeus Awards shows, so over time, a key objective has been to evolve a visual style for the Awards that can be transposed to any venue.

This is currently a sharp, clean look with lots of interconnected lines made up of LED strips and screen surfaces – edgy, smart and an environment that suggested “expectations”.

The SVOPATTS were positioned along the top of the onstage LED screens, a location chosen as homage to that more traditional old-school TV lighting look from the nineties – when the Awards started.

Manfred particularly likes the way the SVOPATTS blended with the venue’s architecture and atmosphere which all came alive with the thrill of the event.

Apart from the ergonomics, he appreciates it being a hybrid fixture that can make a wash, a blinder effect or a strobe, each configuration with its own special characteristics. “It’s extremely flexible for creating multiple looks and scenes,” he commented.

When the SVOPATT was launched, it immediately caught his eye, and with this show coming up, he knew it was an ideal chance to use it in situ.

He likes the quality of the beams when in very narrow mode, and also the collective look of the nine modules together: “I really appreciate having one massive beam or being able to break them up and create some incredible sparkling or twinkling accenting effects, all from the same fixture! Then there is the strobe chip that adds a whole new layer of possibilities.”

The SVOPATTS were used for all the live performances, mainly as soft blinders and beam effects. Manfred comments that they are a great fixture both live and on camera.

Major challenges of lighting this show included utilizing plenty of creative rigging to get lighting positions in the correct places – being a multipurpose event hall as opposed to a theatre, which was looked after by production riggers – and after that, providing 360-degree lighting coverage for the multiple cameras and treading the ever delicate tightrope embracing both broadcast and live performance environments.

Everything went brilliantly on the night of the show, which was hosted by Tom Neuwirth (Conchita Wurst) and Andi Knoll, with the production receiving many compliments and the event hailed as a major success.

Manfred, based in Hamburg and Vienna and working internationally, is looking forward to another opportunity to use SVOPATTS.