Composer Jack Symonds and librettist Louis Garrick’s Gilgamesh is the first opera in English based on The Epic of Gilgamesh.

First translated in 1872, it tells the tale of Uta-Napishti, King of Shuruppak, survivor of the great flood and custodian of the secret of eternal life. Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, rejects the advances of Ishtar, Goddess of Love, and sets off to find Uta-Napishti after killing the Bull of Heaven with the help of Enkidu, a half-man sent by the gods to distract him from deflowering newlywed brides. 

Jack Symonds. Photo © Daniel Boud

Filled with supernatural creatures and fornicating demigods (one coital episode lasts for six days and seven nights), the epic has been set to music several times. Kodallı’s opera and Martinů’s oratorio are arguably the best-known, while John Craton’s version is the first opera written in modern Syriac. 

Symonds and Garrick began discussing the epic in 2019. 

“Louis has known my music since we were teenagers,” Symonds says. “We began Sydney Chamber Opera together, and we’ve always known what we do well as a performing company, and what the artists we work with respond to in content.” 

“All...