Four members of the group Agnetha Faltskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson attended the opening of the show called ABBA Voyage.
While Frida watched the concert with the digital avatars of the band members with a big smile on her face, Benny couldn’t help but stand up and applauded in the song Dancing Queen.
At the end of the concert, the four members of Abba took the stage to greet the audience with deafening cheers.
“Abba never left us, she was always in my heart,” Agnetha Faltskog told the BBC on the red carpet:
“Getting back together was not a difficult decision at all, because music is already a part of our lives.”
Anni-Frid Lynstag said, “I’ve dreamed of this for years. We love the music we make, we love to sing.”
World-renowned names from the music and cinema world such as Kylie Minogue, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Jarvis Cocker and Keira Knightley attended the opening night of ABBA’s last show.
Swedish King Carl 16th and his wife Sylvia were also in the audience.
DIGITAL ABBA-TARS
Preparations for ABBA’s show began in 2016.
ABBA members sing songs like SOS, Voulez-Vous and Lay All Your Love On Me with their 1970 appearance when they were at the height of their fame, in the show designed using the latest technology.
For the show, the band members shot for five weeks in motion-sensitive clothing, with 160 cameras recording their body movements and facial expressions.
Animators and VFX experts then created avatars that reflected the band members’ appearances in 1970.
The producer of the show, Svana Gisla, said, “We want to stir the emotions. If you watched this show and felt that it was a visual feast, we did not succeed. But if you sometimes cry and laugh and can’t wait to watch everything from the beginning again, then we have achieved what we wanted.” .
The designers of ABBA and the show seem to have tackled this challenge.
Because although the show is two-dimensional, the depth of field created by the impressive lighting effects and projections creates the illusion that ABBA is in the same hall as you and you are watching a live concert.
The show, which will meet with the audience on a prefabricated stage in east London, can be watched until December 2022.
Then the show will be carried on tour by folding the stage in accordance with the Swedes style.
This is undoubtedly a great solution for ABBA, who said they would never go on tour after their breakup in 1982, and even turned down an offer to get $1 billion for 100 concerts as they entered the year 2000.