In June 2014, when "The Saga" by French artist Xavier de Richemont, first debuted in downtown San Antonio, the city had never seen anything like it. He was in San Antonio for the attraction’s debut.
"It’s a video painting of the cathedral," de Richemont explained. He harnessed the light, the images, and textures and mapped them onto the San Fernando Cathedral facade.
The cathedral’s earthen tones, twin towers, rose windows and triple wooden doors, don’t necessarily lend themselves to video animation. But de Richemont found a way to breathe life into the inanimate objects.
"I’m working with the architecture of the cathedral, using it and transforming it depending on what I am talking about," he said.
The original 2014 contract was due to expire this June, but the Main Plaza Conservancy’s Molly Hall-Villareal said they came to an agreement with de Richemont. The show will go on.
“We signed a contract with the artist for an additional ten years, so through 2035,” she said. “'The Saga' is just an absolute labor of love. We think that it's just a fantastic free art experience that is truly is one of a kind. There's not another one like this in the United States.”
Over the last 10 years, the Main Plaza Conservancy has tried several different playback nights, and varying times, but they have finally arrived at twice nightly, six nights a week, with Monday dark.
The show lights up San Fernando Cathedral at 9 and 9:30 with animation, and Main Plaza fills with music from local musicians that are incorporated into the animation, as well as English folksinger Donovan, conveying the city’s history.
Hall-Villareal said the history conveyed isn’t one so much of dates and wars, but of people and culture.
“It is a 25 minute art show set to music that tells the history of Texas, but tells the history specifically of San Antonio,” she said. “So, it starts with the San Antonio River and then the first people that that lived here and then, the Spanish settlers and then leads on to what we are — this amazing, diverse city that we are today.”
Now with this new contract, "The Saga" will continue to tell that story for at least the next decade.
