Click on either of the players below to start listening to the sound recording made live at The Black Cap! ---Click on the following to hear selections from the first ever production live at St Mary's! -----Link to download (or review) Act One (which better than Act II, Katy thinks): http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/6325/Link to download (or review) Act Two (which is better than Act I, Giles thinks): http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/6326/Link to download (or review) selections from the first ever production: http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/6665/Turkish Delight the Opera by Giles Howe and Katy Lipson is possibly the strangest thing you will have seen in a while. A musical-opera featuring a strong cast of only four singers, it tells the dramatic story of an ill-fated love affair and the effect it would have on it's participants.Half-way between an opera and a musical but *nothing* like the operetta, it has created a genre all of it's own; taking the depth of drama and vocal agility of the opera and blending it with the accessibility of musical theatre to create it's own identity. The show is full of paradox - it is both hilariously funny and deeply tragic and will make you laugh despite being about insanity, rage, adultery, murder, suicide, extradition, and poisoning.It follows the final chapters in Betsy Cohen's life, she is a mad Turkish Jewish woman who drives her husband literally to distraction. He has an affair with a British woman who'se gay flatmate is secretly in love with her and without giving too much away, it all ends in tears. And a giant gory bloodbath. With ghosts. It's great.The show was started in 2004 by Katy Lipson and Giles Howe, and was originally going to be about a circus freak show! The dummy lyrics used when creating the tunes began to suggest an entirely different story, and four very distinct characters. We were very fortunate in having the incomparable voices of both Jane Garratt and Gareth Bretherton in the first production, for whom two of the four the characters were originally written.Directed by Becky Parry and Giles Howe, the second production to be shown in London (starring Natasha Day, Sophie Juge, Gareth Bretherton, Daniel Lawrence) finished in August; it and was a resounding success. Extra songs were added, the storyline made more linear, new singers were involved, and a slicker story was told.A live CD of the second run and also selections form the first workshop production is now available on jamendo. Video clips from the first ever workshop production (Starring Jane Garratt, Jess Negus, Alexander Albreht and Gareth Bretherton) are the ones you see to your left. the show has come on a long way since that workshop!! If you only get to listen to one or two songs, we suggest 'Folly Of Youth' and 'Angel Delight' in Act I, and 'You Think I'm Stupid' in Act II.When writing it, after Katy and Giles had decided that the show was to be an opera and not a musical, it became clear that it should be an extreme tragedy, or ‘tragique’ - tragedy with its tongue in its cheek. The wife quickly became the most theatrical character, and thus the central focus of the show. Because her personality is so lunatic, the other three characters needed to be comparatively more pedestrian.To keep them dramatic, they decided to distort the traditional theatrical archetypes. The Brit is the romantic lead male, but he is also a gay and murderous. The Turk is the ‘baddie’ but although he’s stringing along two women, it is for him that we feel most pity. Although everyone is a victim, they are all victims of their own circumstance and find themselves only ever in situations of their own making.Many changes have been made since the shows inception. The storyline has been made more linear, new songs have been added and some taken away.A church was majestic place to open the show’s first workshop, but an inappropriate place to accommodate much of it’s dark humour! The Black Cap with it’s long history of alternative entertainment (gallows, cabaret club, drag bar) was an ideal place to perform the second production. Turkish Delight has the privilege of being the first opera to be performed there. And as far as I can research, maybe even the first ever Turkish Jewish opera? (The two Turkish charachters are incidentally called Ohad Cohen and Betsy Cohen; Welsh people may find a pun in her name.)A thirty minute showcase is being performed as part of the Stockholm pride festivities, and a further showcase is being planned for Stockholm in the Autumn. There are talks of performing it in www.my-tropical-islands.com also and further talks with film director Aleem Kahn. The show being performed in Sweden this summer will be thirty minutes long, and will comprise of the musical-theatre style duets from Act I, also some other surprises and even some new works, some of which have never been heard before! Katy is being shipped out to Sweden especially for it, and Giles is very excited to see her again - they have not seen each other since he moved to Sweden almost two months ago! They will be performing just the two of them and a piano in an intimate environment and would be delighted to have you there.Please come and see the show when it is staged, it needs your support to succeed; it's groundbreaking and unforgettable - you will regret having missed it. (!) And you will love it!Please feel free to visit Giles and Katy on myspace, they are both on the Top friends list, as are the other actors from the second cast, also Jess from the first cast.Press please contact giles on 00 46 70 481 68 33Entire album uploaded to Jamendo for you to download for *free*!!Act One, live at The Black Cap, Camden, London:Act Two, live at The Black Cap, Camden, London:Selections from the very first ever production live at St Mary's, Euston, London.Enjoy!!
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