Only the best juice at L.A. Opera

WHEN the computers running the elaborate set for Los Angeles Opera’s “Grendel” crashed recently -- postponing the premiere -- no one could blame a power glitch: The company put its own generator in the loading dock outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion to ensure that the computers had absolutely clean and stable power.

“Computers don’t like to see dirty power,” says Jeff Kleeman, Los Angeles Opera’s technical director. (For the layman, “dirty power” means noise in the signal.) “If you look on an oscilloscope -- if you have clean power, it’s a very even wavelength. When it’s dirty, it’s got noise in that signal.”

Lightbulbs and most household appliances aren’t bothered by such noise. But computers would be, and so would the video cameras and high-tech sound equipment needed for “Grendel.”

Putting in the generator forestalled any problem, according to Kleeman. “You can dial it to exactly the voltage you want,” he says. “If it works better at 129 volts than it does at 127 volts, you can actually set that.”

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Chris Pasles