It was a heck of an opening gambit: In its first week on Broadway, the new revival of “ Chess ” earned more than $1.2 million from just four sold-out performances. A few weeks later, the show, headlined by stars Lea Michele , Aaron Tveit and Nicholas Christopher, broke the house record at the Imperial Theatre for a seven-performance week, topping $1.7 million. And the week after, it broke the theater’s eight-performance record with a $2 million haul.

Not bad for an under-the-radar title that famously flopped on Broadway 40 years ago.

In those intervening decades, the score of “Chess,” written by the ABBA songwriting duo of Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus and featuring tunes “I Know Him So Well,” “Nobody’s Side,” “Anthem” and the Top 40 hit “One Night in Bangkok,” picked up a cu

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