Gilgamesh: Man and Music
In September, Sydney Chamber Opera, Opera Australia and Carriageworks will premiere Gilgamesh, the first opera in English based on humanity’s oldest written epic poem.
At this exclusive preview event, Sydney Chamber Opera’s Artistic Director and Gilgamesh composer, Jack Symonds will discuss creating this vast work with live performances from its principal singers alongside a short talk by renowned scholar Dr Louise Pryke on the original poem.
Emerging from ancient Mesopotamian mythology, The Epic of Gilgamesh tells of a restless young king who, through experiences of love and loss, becomes a better person. His unexpected love for a half-man, half-animal leads him wide-eyed into mysterious realms.
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Gilgamesh’s story sings to us across millennia, and this brand-new opera uncovers all that remains strikingly relevant: its approach to mortality, sexuality and our relationship with nature. This is the first opera in English based upon this foundational part of civilisation.
Gilgamesh is composed by Sydney Chamber Opera Artistic Director Jack Symonds and brought to Carriageworks’ vast performance space by visionary director Kip Williams (Sydney Theatre Company’s The Picture of Dorian Gray). Singing scorpions share the stage with a Bull of Heaven and oracles interpreting the flood which swept the Earth.
This is Opera Australia’s first collaboration with Sydney Chamber Opera, a company renowned for presenting “an astonishing new vision of what contemporary opera can achieve” (Time Out). Two outstanding chamber music ensembles bring a collective virtuosity to this colourful new score: Australian String Quartet and Ensemble Offspring.
Gilgamesh will premiere at Carriageworks from 26 September to 5 October.
Jack Symonds is a composer, conductor and pianist, and Artistic Director of Sydney Chamber Opera. He studied composition at the Royal College of Music, London under Kenneth Hesketh and at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music where he received the University Medal. His stage works represent “a striking and impressive new operatic voice” (Sydney Morning Herald) and he is “one of those performers who seemingly can play anything” (Australian Book Review). He specialises in the performance of new music, including conducting and playing major stage works by Britten, Benjamin, Janáček, Dusapin, Kurtág, Saariaho, Maxwell Davies, Kancheli, Rihm & Styles, often in their Australian premieres. He has performed in and made work for the Holland, Tokyo, Sydney, Melbourne & Adelaide Festivals, Dark MOFO, Sydney Opera House, Biennale of Sydney, Carriageworks, Melbourne Recital Centre, National Gallery of Australia, among others.
Louise Pryke is an ancient historian and honorary associate with the Discipline of Classics and Ancient History, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney. She graduated from the University of Sydney with a PhD in Ancient History and has taught courses in ancient languages and literature at Macquarie University and the University of Sydney. She is the author of Scorpion (2016), Ishtar (2017), Gilgamesh (2019), Turtle (2020), and Wind (2023).
Header image: Mitchell Riley in The Shape of the Earth composed by Jack Symonds, directed and designed by Alexander Berlage for Sydney Chamber Opera, photo by Zan Wimberley.
Opera Australia, Sydney Chamber Opera and Carriageworks present Gilgamesh, in association with Australian String Quartet and Ensemble Offspring.