Return to Turnage's first Triumph

Composer Mark-Antony Turnage has an uncanny turnage knack of making an impact. This was all too evident in February this year when the Royal Opera House premiered his latest opera Anna Nicole, a production that it would not be unfair to describe as a smash hit in operatic terms and one that certainly made the headlines in broadsheets and tabloids alike.

Every bit as brilliant and provocative is Turnage's first operatic venture, Greek which we will be taking on tour in a new co-production with Theatr Brycheiniog this summer and autumn.

It made a sensational impact when it was first staged at the Munich Biennale in June 1988 despite Turnage being a relatively unknown composer at the time. Within two years of its German premiere, the opera travelled to the Edinburgh Festival, transferred to the screen in an award-winning film version by the BBC and made the Laurence Oliver Awards shortlist following its London staging by English National Opera - quite a feat!

Based on the play of the same name by Steven Berkoff, Greek is a contemporary re-telling of the Oedipus myth set in the East End of London. Turnage has spoken of the "exhilarating shock" he felt on first encountering Berkoff's work. "His combination of poetry, humour and physical theatre is incendiary" he says, adding that Berkoff's language "has exactly the right combination of high-flown lyricism and earthy, everyday speech - a heady cocktail of Shakespeare and Cockney".

From these ingredients Turnage created a ground-breaking work: an opera, yes but also a robust piece of physical theatre fizzing with raw energy and pungent melancholy.

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