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''Chess'' is a musical with music by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, formerly of ABBA, and with lyrics by Tim Rice. The story involves a politically driven, Cold War-era chess tournament between two men—an American grandmaster and a Soviet grandmaster—and their fight over a woman who manages one and falls in love with the other. Although the protagonists were not intended to represent any real individuals, the character of the American grandmaster (named Freddie Trumper in the stage version) was loosely based on Bobby Fischer,〔 "Bernie Jacobs, the grand Rhadamanthus of the Shubert Organization, one of the presenters of the musical, says that Bobby originally was the model for the American player but that in the course of events his image got a little diluted."〕 while elements of the story may have been inspired by the chess careers of Russian grandmasters Viktor Korchnoi and Anatoly Karpov. Like several other productions, namely ''Jesus Christ Superstar'' and ''Cats'', a highly successful concept album was released prior to the first theatrical production in order to raise money. In the case of ''Chess'', the concept album was released in the fall of 1984 while the show opened in London's West End in 1986 where it played for three years. A much-altered U.S. version premiered on Broadway in 1988, but survived only for two months. ''Chess'' is frequently revised for new productions, many of which try to merge elements from both the British and American versions, but no major revival production of the musical has yet been attempted either in the West End or on Broadway. ''Chess'' placed seventh in a BBC Radio 2 listener poll of the U.K.'s "Number One Essential Musicals." == Development == Lyricist Tim Rice had long wanted to create a musical about the Cold War. During the mid-'70s, he had discussed writing a musical about the Cuban Missile Crisis with his usual collaborator, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, but that idea never came to fruition. In the late '70s, Rice got the idea to tell his Cold War story through the prism of the long-standing U.S.-Soviet chess rivalry; he had earlier been fascinated by the political machinations of the 1972 "Match of the Century" between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky.〔(CHESS seeks to shed its checkered past ), Stephen Holden, ''The New York Times'', 24 April 1988〕 However, when Rice wanted to start working on the new musical in early 1979, Lloyd Webber was already well underway with his own independent musical ''Cats''. (Premiering two seasons later in the West End, ''Cats'' became one of the most successful musicals of all time and was also the first one to employ a huge engineering staff to supervise its many technical elements, a paradigm which would be adopted for ''Chess'' in numerous capacities during its development.) Subsequently, American producer Richard Vos suggested to Rice to work with Andersson and Ulvaeus instead, knowing that they were looking to develop and produce projects outside of ABBA. An ardent fan of the group, Rice agreed. He later wrote that he felt no reservations because "there is a sense of theatre in the ABBA style".〔(How to spend £4 million in one night ), Tim Rice, ''The Sunday Times'', 11 May 1986〕 With Vos also in attendance, Rice met with the two in Stockholm for the first time on 15 December 1981 in order to discuss the concept, and they quickly signed on to the project. All through 1982 and `83, the three men worked on the music and lyrics. Rice would describe the mood of particular songs he wanted, then Andersson and Ulvaeus would write and record the music and send the tapes to Rice, who would then write lyrics to fit the music, and send the resulting tapes back to Andersson and Ulvaeus and so on. Some of the songs on the resulting album contained elements of music Andersson and Ulvaeus had previously written for ABBA. For example, the chorus of "I Know Him So Well" was based on the chorus of "I Am An A," a song from their 1977 tour,〔("Bright Lights Dark Shadows: The Real Story of ABBA", Carl Magnus Palm, p. 471 )〕 while the chorus of "Anthem" used the chord structures from the guitar solo from their 1980 ABBA song "Our Last Summer". Ulvaeus would also provide dummy lyrics to emphasise the rhythmic patterns of the music, and since Rice found a number of these "embarrassingly good" as they were, incorporated a few in the final version. The most well known example is "One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble". One song, which became "Heaven Help My Heart," was recorded with an entire set of lyrics, sung by ABBA's Agnetha Fältskog with the title "Every Good Man",〔 although none of the original lyrics from this song were used. Partly to raise money in order to produce the show in the West End and partly to see how the material would fare with the public, it was decided to release the music as an album before any stage productions were undertaken, a strategy that had proven successful with Rice's two previous musicals, ''Jesus Christ Superstar'' and ''Evita''. Owing in part to the different countries in which the lyricist and composers resided, recording on the album musical of ''Chess'' began in Stockholm in early November 1983, with Andersson recording the many layered keyboard parts himself along with other basic work at their usual Polar Studios, and choral and orchestral work then recorded in London by The Ambrosian Singers along with the London Symphony Orchestra. The album was then sound-engineered and mixed back at Polar by longtime ABBA sound engineer Michael B. Tretow. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Chess (musical)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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