The world premiere of an opera is always a special event, especially when the work in question immediately carves a place for itself alongside other milestones in the canon.

Jack Symonds’ brilliant new opera Gilgamesh does just that, succinctly juxtaposing epic themes with more intimate moments, examining the human condition while conveying the apocalyptic, the sensual and intra-personal.

Jeremy Kleeman in Gilgamesh. Photo © Daniel Boud

Combining the chamber forces of the Australian String Quartet and Ensemble Offspring, Symonds steers a path from extended periods of discord to harmony and back again as he maps out the primal, hyper-sexual tale of Gilgamesh, a tyrannical king who embarks on a journey of self-realisation.

Along the way we witness the desecration of nature, burgeoning homosexual love between Gilgamesh (Jeremy Kleeman) and his opponent Enkidu (Mitchell Riley), the destruction of the kingdom of Uruk by the scorned goddess of love Ishtar (Jane Sheldon) and the quest to find Uta-Napishti (Jessica O’Donoghue), holder of the secret of immortality.

By and large, Louis Garrick’s libretto serves the original Epic of Gilgamesh well, although we are provided a truncated explanation for Enkidu’s creation, and there is only a cursory mention...