Gothenburg Opera to present an updated Chess på Svenska
Billed as “an updated version of the national treasure CHESS”, director Mira Bartov is putting another spin on CHESS. And this time ‘CHESS på Svenska’ no less.
The show will be presented at Göteborgs Operan (where Kristina från Duvemåla was performed back in 1996). The music will be conducted by Anders Eljas who arranged the music for CHESS and directed the London Symphony Orchestra both for the album recording and during the European tour of 1984.
Using the graphic style of the comic world, the production team creates an updated version of this national gem. With today’s surveillance society as a dramatic metaphor for the cold war, we zoom in on a televised chess championship.
The two chess players Freddie and Anatoly represent polar opposites: one voluntarily revels in attention, and the other is subject to enforced surveillance.
Anatoly’s wife Svetlana is the woman who looks after everything, but loses her husband, while Freddie’s girlfriend Florence represents the free woman who has everything, but has lost her own self.
Over the course of a few turbulent days, these four lives are turned upside down. Once the championship is over, none of the characters is the same as before the first move was made. Director Mira Bartov made her international debut as a director in 2010 at the Geneva Opera.
Playing the principal characters are Philip Jalmelid as Anatoly, Evelyn Jons as Florence, Christopher Wollter as Freddie and Nine Pressing as Svetlana.
The show will open on 08 September and run until 31 December (not every day will have a performance though) and tickets are on sale now.
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This sounds like a very interesting version.
Chess needs to have every aspect of the original concept fully explored on stage, if not the cold war then a metaphor for it.
Does anyone know will this have all the songs?
Anyone intereste in going to see one of the mainee performances which are available for general bookings rather than evenigns ones which are limited to subscribers to the Opera House, Ryan Air are doing £44 return flights from Stanstead Airport.
Anyone know how to get tickets other than Ticnet, which doesn’t accept american credit cards. Can’t get tixs to BAO in August because of the same issue. Slightly frustrating.
I’m living up to the “stupid american” reputation. 2 seconds of research and I see you that can call the opera house directly by phone….but if anyone knows how to get BAO tixs, let me know. Went last year. Pure heaven. So fun. Felt lucky some lovely woman asked me to dance…which I faked my way thru, poorly.
A link that might be useful for anyone planning to visit Gothenburg (Göteborg):
http://www.goteborg.com/en/
Thank you, Niclas. That is an excellent link.
Just seen on Youtube several clips of songs from the 2012 Aarhus, Danish production in English with photgrpahic montages.
These sound like studio rather than live recordings and the listings imply that there is a new 2012 International Cast Recording.
Anyone know anything about this?
Whilst it’s nice to have another recording it seems fairly pointless when there’s the Complete Danish recording from 2001 and the more recent In Concert recording from the Royal Albert Hall.
Out 1 October according to Broadway.com