Featured Image credit In the Bag and Star Events Ltd
After 15 months of a world tour covering Europe, America, Australia and New Zealand, Adele finished her 119 shows at Wembley Stadium in June 2017; billed as “Adele The Finale”. The concerts broke the attendance record set by U2 back in 2009, drawing nearly 98,000 fans.
The set list saw Adele perform a huge range of songs from all three of her studio albums including Hello, Rumour Has it, Rolling in the Deep and Skyfall, with the main set reaching a climax with Set Fire to the Rain illuminated by a pyrotechnic display by Titanium Fireworks.
With a stunning 360 degree, 25 metre high stage positioned in the middle of the Stadium surrounded by the audience, the pyrotechnics had to be zero debris, low smoke stage and arena effects. Great care was taken to select the right material, as well as careful design and choreography. As this was the finale to a long world tour, Adele wanted to make the Wembley shows stand out by adding a little extra sparkle. As well as the 70 second pyro sequence fired from the top of the stage truss, the proposal was to fire a 35 second sequence each night from the famous Wembley Arch to be synchronised with the stage pyro. This is the first time a firework installation of this size and duration has been rigged and fired from the Arch. Previous displays for the Champions League were only about 10 seconds in duration, whereas our firework display company had to deliver four identical 35 second sequences, which, given there was no time to reload between shows, meant that all four sequences had to be rigged in advance.
A bespoke rigging solution was required to attach 2,000 single shot effects to 38 positions across the 315 metre span. Rigging to the structure also required a specialist team of our working at height pyrotechnicians together with level 3 IRATA rope access climbers from Hollandia, some of whom we had worked with previously on the London Eye.
The technical delivery of 38 positions from the Arch and 30 stage positions was achieved using two FireOne XL4 control panels. Timecode was delivered to the main pyro control located on the field of play where the first control panel fired the stage pyro and from here a transmitter broadcast to the control panel on the roof of the stadium to fire the Arch. The entire 70 second sequence was fired using FireOne’s Ultrafire software to achieve split second synchronisation with the soundtrack. The finale received rapturous applause from the 98,000 capacity audience. We would also like to extend our gratitude to Howard & Sons who previously delivered the shows in Australia and New Zealand for all their collaboration and assistance and to Shaun Barnett of Quantum SFX.