Last Gambit in Lisbon

During World War Two, Portugal remained neutral. Many of the people who found themselves there had little choice as to where they might live, work or even survive. Among those who had had little choice, was Alexander Alekhine, the World Chess Champion.

Alexander is a man looking for a life away from sitting alone in his hotel room, with nothing but a chess board on a table and dinner in his lap. He is looking for inspiration, looking for his muse and ultimately; a way to return to his previous glory. Perhaps he has found it…?

PLEASE NOTE: Although this story is based on real life people and situations, it has been heavily fictionalized and should not be seen as historically accurate.

CAST:
Ian Carter as Alexander
Howard Russell as Gerald
David Taylor as Boris
Saime Higson as Olga
Jasmine Warwick as Lilian
And Eletta Giusto as Caissa

CREDITS:
Written by Christopher Bellamy & Brian Stephenson
Edited and Directed by Peter Beeston
Sound Effects via: http://www.freesound.org
Music: Sunset, Fading Rays Waltz, Life’s Composing, When the Lights Came On, Comfort in a Bottle, Nothing Lasts Forever, Its Only Mourning, A Note is My Gift; all by Kai Engel
This work is released under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported license

.BONUS ITEM

Want to know a little bit more about the character of Caissa, the goddess of chess? Caissa originated in a 658-line poem called Scacchia, Ludus published in 1527 by Hieronymus Vida, which describes in Latin Virgilian hexameters a chess game between Apollo and Mercury in the presence of the other gods. The pioneering English orientalist Sir William Jones re-used Vida’s character Caïssa in 1763. In his poem, Caïssa initially repels the advances of the god of war, Mars. Spurned, Mars seeks the aid of the god of sport Euphron, brother of Venus, who creates the game of chess as a gift for Mars to win Caïssa’s favor.

As we strongly believe that it’s important that all classical texts have spoken recordings made available, and as we couldn’t find one available for this piece. We’ve recorded it ourselves, which you can hear below on our soundcloud page.

5 Comments

  1. Pingback: Last Gambit in Lisbon | New Audio Drama November 29, 2015
  2. Saime December 1, 2015
  3. Ron Fenton December 6, 2015
  4. Barry Barnes December 20, 2015
  5. Barry Barnes December 21, 2015
  6. Saime January 2, 2016

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