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Mad About Video chooses Lightware’s MX2 matrix switcher for “Tosca” at Teatru Astra

Mad About Video is a specialist in video for live events and installations throughout Malta. The company’s long-running partnership with Lightware began in 2014 when Mad About Video co-founders Gerald Agius Ordway and Alex Magri first encountered Lightware’s equipment through Italian rental partners. 

“When we formed the company, we used to rent equipment from Italy, and it was there that I saw my first Lightware matrix switcher”, recalls Ordway, Director at Mad About Video. “I have used Lightware ever since.”

The annual opera at Teatru Astra on the island of Gozo has become one of Mad About Video’s regular projects, with the company supporting the production for more than a decade now. Each October, the theatre hosts an opera known for its ambitious staging and large-format video integration. In 2025, it was the turn of Puccini’s “Tosca” to grace the stage.

For this project, Mad About Video supplied four Epson projectors, two Disguise media servers - one operating as the main playback system and the other running as a backup - and Lightware’s MX2 system for the handling of all signal management, along with OPTJ extenders for long-distance transmission.

“We’ve been doing this show for over ten years, and there’s always a large video element,” says Ordway. “We provide the projectors, we create all the video content, and Lightware handles all the signal transmission between the media servers and projectors.”

The creative brief for the opera called for a background projection covering the full upstage wall, complemented by an additional front projector used to layer textures, materials and create artistic effects. The goal was to create moods through visual effects, in turn helping to craft an emotional atmosphere for the performance. Mad About Video developed all video content and the team arrived on site a week before rehearsals to create and assemble the technical environment directly in the theatre.

The system design relied on a Lightware MX2-8x8-HDMI20-L matrix switcher. For long-distance transmission, the Mad About Video team utilised Lightware’s HDMI20-OPTJ-TX90 and RX90 optical transmitter and receiver extenders. This ability for long-distance transmission was crucial because the front-of-house control position sat around 35 metres from the stage, and the actual cable path extended far beyond that.

“The path was very long for the cables”, says Ordway. “Usually, we need 120 metres to arrive at the location, but in this setup, we were using over 150 metres of fibre. The Lightware OPTJ units handled the signal transmission perfectly.”

The same backbone was also used to feed an additional projector dedicated to powering the opera’s subtitles. Mad About Video cites Lightware’s continuous product evolution as one of the reasons for their continued loyalty to the brand, such as the recent updated support for 5K resolutions. “The new 5K support will be increasingly relevant for us”, Ordway notes, “as installations grow in complexity and our work in museums demands higher-resolution displays.”

(Photos: Lightware Visual Engineering)

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