VocalEssence to present concert version of the musical ‘Kristina’ at Bethel University

Benny Andersson knows something about earworms.

He created many during the 1970s and early ‘80s as half of the tandem that wrote the songs of Swedish pop group ABBA. It stands for Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid, and Andersson was the keyboardist and chief musician responsible for the unshakably infectious pop of “Dancing Queen,” “Waterloo” and “Take a Chance on Me.”

After ABBA’s 1982 split, Andersson and lyricist partner Björn Ulvaeus decided to focus on stage works, starting with the musical “Chess,” before creating their magnum opus, “Kristina.” That three-hour combination of musical and opera was based on the “Emigrants” novels of Swedish author Vilhelm Moberg that chronicle a 19th-century family’s journey from Sweden to Minnesota’s St. Croix River Valley.

A year after its 1995 premiere in Malmo, Sweden, Minneapolis-based VocalEssence presented a concert version of “Kristina” at Orchestra Hall. On Saturday, it will revive the work at Bethel University’s Benson Great Hall, presenting an English translation with a 150-voice choir, orchestra and four vocal soloists. And VocalEssence founder and artistic director Philip Brunelle says that it’s chock-full of earworms.

“The music is fabulous,” Brunelle said last week. “If you said to me a year ago, ‘Philip, do you remember any of the music from ‘Kristina’?,’ I’d immediately go over to the piano and start playing it. It gets in your brain.”

Speaking last week from his office and studio in Stockholm, the 77-year-old Andersson said that he and Ulvaeus were looking at a far smaller project — adapting E.T.A. Hoffmann short stories — when they decided to go in the opposite direction and create an epic.

“For me, it took five years to complete the music,” Andersson said via Zoom, a framed gold record glistening in the sunlight behind him. “Mainly because of the total respect for Moberg’s work. Because those books are gold. They’re the most famous novels in this country. Everyone knows the stories. Everyone’s seen the movies. … We had to make it our own to be able to continue.”

The result was three hours of music from a team more accustomed to compressing their musical ideas into 3 ½-minute increments. During those five years of writing, Andersson and Ulvaeus traveled to Minnesota to get a sense of the landscape where much of the story is set.

“I enjoyed being in Minnesota, going up to Lindstrom, checking the old tracks of Vilhelm Moberg,” he said, adding that much of Minnesota struck him as similar to Sweden. “It’s a little colder and a little hotter. Otherwise, the seasons are very similar.”

In 1996, VocalEssence performed “Kristina” in Swedish, but an English translation premiered at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 2009. That version will be performed with minimal staging at Bethel, in Arden Hills.

Being a story of immigration — one of the most ubiquitous issues of the presidential campaign — is this a particularly important time to experience “Kristina”?

“It will always be a good time,” Andersson said. “There are so many movements all over the planet. People having to move for different reasons.”

After Andersson and Ulvaeus completed “Kristina” in 1995, another project soon came knocking. An English producer wanted to create a jukebox musical comedy with a score full of ABBA songs. “Mamma Mia” premiered in 1999 (and is still running in London’s West End) and has since spawned two films.

“I tried to sort of avoid being an ABBA man,” Andersson said. “But that became impossible with ‘Mamma Mia.’ And then this idea came up of creating a musical show with avatar models of us.”

ABBA reunited to record new songs for 2021′s “Voyage” (its highest-charting album to date) and new versions of its old songs. They’re being presented in a London concert residency by a 10-piece band and virtual avatars of the 1979 version of ABBA’s four principals, courtesy of cinematic visual effects experts Industrial Light & Magic.

“When this idea came up that we could actually be on stage while we were walking the dog at home or cooking, that sounded interesting,” Andersson said. “Especially as it had never been done before. But it’s very cool. And very expensive.”

With: Conductor Philip Brunelle, the VocalEssence Chorus and Ensemble Singers, an orchestra and four vocal soloists.

When: 4 p.m. Sat.

Where: Benson Great Hall, 3900 Bethel Drive, Arden Hills.

Tickets: $25-$45, available at 612-371-5656 or vocalessence.org.

Classical music writer Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.