ABBACADABRA

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Ticket pricing: $175 | $55 | $35

ABBACADABRA – The #1 ABBA Tribute is coming to Resorts Casino Hotel benefitting the Shultz Hill Foundation!

If you love “Mamma Mia – The Musical” and the “Mamma Mia” movies, you’ll LOVE Abbacadabra – The Ultimate ABBA Tribute! This uncanny ensemble brings not only the looks and vibe of #ABBA, they put on a full-on concert of one of the world’s most beloved bands at their peak. Bumper-to-bumper hits include “Dancing Queen,” “Voulez Vous,” “Chiqitita,” “Fernando,” “The Winner Takes It All,” “Waterloo,” and more!

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The “Ultimate ABBA Tribute” and selling out showrooms and stages all over the world, ABBACADABRA got its start in 2004 thanks to executive producer Garry Raffanelli.

A musician from a young age, Raffanelli has made a career out of music and entertainment—performing, producing acts and building custom pianos for some of the world’s biggest stars through his brand, Slam Grand Pianos. Raffanelli performed for decades as part of the musical duo Gary and Sandy with vocalist Sandy Selby, touring nationally before landing in the casino showroom and lounge scene of Reno and Las Vegas in 1976.

Raffanelli was eventually approached by the entertainment director of Harrah’s Reno to come up with an act. Raffanelli said that he gave the director three other ideas, and when pressed for a fourth, he invented a plan for an ABBA tribute act there and then.

“On the way to the meeting, in my car, my Saturn … when I open up the glove compartment, there’s (an ABBA) Gold cassette,” Raffanelli said. “And I go, ‘God, I love ABBA.’ So I popped that thing in, and I’m listening to ABBA on the way to the meeting. … And I said, ‘As long as it doesn’t leave this room, I’m putting together an ABBA show.’”
The enthusiastic response prompted him to spend the next year and a half musically dissecting ABBA’s greatest hits by ear and hand-picking musicians to not only accurately perform their music, but replicate—and sometimes spoof—the personalities of the Swedish supergroup in their heyday.

“We do the show pretending to be the players,” Raffanelli said. “If you know about ABBA, the two guys were married to the two girls, and then they divorced—and they weren’t really pleasant divorces. So we play the show as if they’re divorced, but we ran into some financial deals and now we’ve got to play together again. So there’s that edge, and there’s a little bit of name-calling, and I think that makes the show very funny. That’s what makes our show different.”

ABBACADABRA continues to tour nationally and internationally, even though the lineup has changed over the years, with Raffanelli managing the group while performing onstage himself. Even with the cast assuming the roles of the original members of ABBA, the legalities of performing have never inhibited the live show or the recordings they make and sell. (Although the show’s logo is spelled “Adbacadbra” in a stylized manner to avoid trademark similarities.)

To Raffanelli, tribute acts—ABBACADABRA in particular—can be successful from a business standpoint because of the economics of packing big rooms and the natural appeal to audience nostalgia.

“We can sell out the show for a fraction of the cost of bringing in the real act,” he said. “These acts, you can’t see anymore, so the tribute acts are taking up that slack for a much more reasonable price.”

To Raffanelli, the consummate showman, it’s not enough to simply put on the costumes and sing the songs. He said the highest praise he receives is when he feels he’s given his audience the same feeling he got when he saw ABBA live in 1979.

“People walk out going, ‘Thank you; I got to see ABBA live,’” he said.