Merano is a song in three parts. The first part is in the "Italian Alps" style; the second part is in the "American Rock" style; and the third part is a reprise of the first part. As the old Schoolhouse Rock song puts it, "Three Is A Magic Number".
There were two choruses prior to this one, and the reprise uses lyrics from both of them: "Oh I Get High When I Saunter By", and "Oh I Feel Great In This Bouncing State". Kind of a clever idea, and it's one of those touches that an audience won't really notice.
The Coda starts at m.57, and in the Royal Albert Hall version, there's an accelerando here. That never made any sense to me, as it's hard enough to understand the lyrics. We weren't going to put up subtitles, and I didn't like the idea of my audience not understanding what the ensemble was singing. So, we didn't do an accelerando. We did do the subito piano, as it is notated in the score and helps to break up the Coda from the chorus.
For the ending, I abandoned the Grand Pause in m.80, as I think this confuses the audience. Instead, I put a fermata over m.81, held it six counts, then spiked it on beat 7. The audience went wild at every show, so I think this change worked.
We had a scene shift at this point, to get us from the Alps into Freddie's hotel room, where he's playing chess against a computer opponent. This required some scene change music, so we played the Merano Reprise from m.16-31. It's common in musicals for scene change music to repeat the song that was just performed, as it's still fresh in the audience's mind. I usually pick a well-known section, and just repeat it as necessary.
Computer chess games appeared in the late 1970's. I had a Fidelity Chess Challenger 3, and although it wasn't exactly a grandmaster, it was good enough for my skill level at the time. Since the World Chess Championship in Merano was held in 1981, it seems likely that the computer chess opponent that Freddie is playing against is more like this one, with voice capabilities and playing at a ELO level of over 1750.
So we now know the history of Chess, and we know where the big match is going to be played. We've briefly met Freddie and Florence, and now it's time to start telling the story.
