“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
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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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.
The opera is scored for 6 voices and a small theatre orchestra. There is also an arrangement for 6 voices and piano only.
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 and performance/perusal materials, please contact the composer directly, or visit the Contact page.
Watch the video excerpts from the Edinburgh Fringe production:
Get the words and music right now as a digital download from SheetMusicPlus:
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