Othello in the Seraglio: The Tragedy of Sümbül the Black Eunuch, A coffeehouse opera

Music by Mehmet Ali Sanlikol | Script by Robert Labaree | Directed by Brian Fairley

Othello, a uniquely powerful coffeehouse opera, tells an age-old story of passionate love and murderous jealousy. Sümbül, a Black slave in the 17th century Ottoman Court, rises to power and riches, only to come to a tragic end.  The opera is performed on European period instruments and traditional Turkish instruments by an ensemble of 12 instrumentalists, singers and a storyteller. The story focuses on Othello in the Seraglio and is scaled to the intimate, informal setting of a coffeehouse in seventeenth century Istanbul (Constantinople). The storyteller spins out a well-known tale, a historically-based legend of love and jealousy, intensified by the crossing of boundaries between the free and the enslaved, white and black, Muslim and non-Muslim, East and West.  The opera intertwines three different tales, including The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice by William Shakespeare, Un Capitano Moro (A Moorish Captain) by Giovanbattista Giraldi (Cinzio), and Kızlarağası’nın Piçi (The Bastard of the Chief Black Eunuch) by Reşad Ekrem Koçu.

The multi-layered script is by New England Conservatory music historian Robert Labaree, while the stunning score, by Boston composer and Grammy nominee Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol, weaves together Italian Baroque and Turkish sources with his own newly-composed music into a tapestry of uncanny beauty. You have never heard anything like this before – because nothing like it has existed until now.