Original author: Les Luthiers
"The Beauties In The Brig" tells the story of a Spanish ship carrying a group of female prisoners to be judged in Cadiz. It describes the relationship between the sailors and the outlaw women while the brig is besieged by Raul, a pirate, to whose gang the prisoners belong to.
This opera is based on the novel "Longing" by George Steve Smith Persons. Its adaptation was very hard, since the original book is about a lumberjack living with his parrot in a forest in Bulgaria. The only character that remained after the adaptation was the parrot.
The authors, Ralph Johnson-Johnson and Albert Favret Orwell, had composed several successful operettas before. They quickly agreed on the main line of the lyrics and music, and worked very hard for three months. When they met again, they discovered, not without surprise, that both had written the lyrics. It was at that point that they decided to add a composer to the team.
They hired the famous composer Ramón Veliz García, also known as "The Cervantes of the guitar" (because he was one-handed). Now, we'll hear the second act of "The Beauties In The Brig", by Steven Smith & Johnson-Johnson & Favret Orwell & Veliz García.
