“Lean, spare and lyrical...the libretto is crystal clear" - The Guardian
“Pushes the boundaries...in subject matter, structure and tonality” -
British Theatre Guide
“A sophisticated opera” - musicomh.com
Welcome to turingtestopera.com, home of the opera The Turing Test by Scottish composer Julian Wagstaff. This witty and sophisticated show tells the story of Stephanie, a brilliant young PhD student, trapped between two rival scientists battling to be the first to build a truly intelligent computer - a machine that can pass the famous Turing Test. The opera was a sell-out hit at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
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PROFESSIONAL TOUR 2013 - Be part of it!
Plans are in place to revive The Turing Test for a professional UK tour in late 2013. We are currently seeking partners from within the technology sector and beyond to help bring The Turing Test to the stage once more. There will be a major media campaign to support the tour, and an educational strand which will engage with schools and colleges at the tour locations.
We are delighted that James Lowe, star of the Channel 4 series Orchestra United has agreed to conduct the new production. The Department of Computing of Imperial College London has generously come on board as a tour sponsor - but we need additional partners to make the tour a reality.
Click here to find out more about the benefits your organisation can enjoy as an official sponsor of the 2013 tour. You will be in good company...
Background
The opera is in one act (one hour in duration) and takes its name from the test proposed by the English mathematician Alan Turing for human-level intelligence in a computer. Essentially, Turing suggested that if you couldn't tell a computer and a human apart when chatting to them via a keyboard, then the computer had passed the test and could be said to be intelligent. The opera is humurous, romantic, tragic, intelligent and engaging, with appeal to a broad general audience as well as aficionados of science and music.
The Turing Test enjoyed a five-night sell-out run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2007, performed by Edinburgh Studio Opera (Edinburgh University's opera club). The production was a huge success, gaining excellent reviews in the UK press, and was cited by the novelist Alexander McCall Smith as a cultural highlight of 2007 in the Daily Telegraph's Review of the Year.
Please feel free to browse this site for plot and character summaries, background info, sound clips, video clips and press cuttings, or click the button below to watch on YouTube. For all enquiries relating to the opera, including those relating to performing rights, please contact the composer directly.
