Photo Flash: First Look at Goteborgsoperan's CHESS

Related: Chess

The Goteborgsoperan presents CHESS, September 8, 2012 through March 22, 2013. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the production below. For tickets and more information, visit: http://en.opera.se/forestallningar/chess-pa-svenska-2012-2013/.

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. Conductor Anders Eljas arranged the music for Chess and directed the London Symphony Orchestra both for the album recording and during the European tour of 1984.