Score: Gilgamesh : an opera in two acts / music by Jack Symonds ; libretto by Louis Garrick. [2025] : Product : Australian Music Centre

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Gilgamesh : an opera in two acts / music by Jack Symonds ; libretto by Louis Garrick.

by Jack Symonds and Louis Garrick (2024)

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Instrumentation: Soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone, bass voices, flute (piccolo, alto flute, bass flute), oboe (cor anglais), clarinet (bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet), piano (keyboard), harp, 1 Percussion (Crotales, vibraphone, aluphone, bongos, tom-toms, snare, bass drum, suspended cymbals, sandpaper blocks, waterphone, ocean drum), live electronics (all singers & instruments individually miked, laptop running Max, diffused in surround, 2 sound designers required for operation).
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In making an opera after the Epic of Gilgamesh, we follow the example of the Renaissance originators of the operatic art form. We explore an ancient text, uncovering all that speaks to us even thousands of years later, and we couch our reading in the musical and theatrical language of our times.

Like all great epics, that of Gilgamesh is about many things: power, lust, revenge, grief. What stood out to us was the narrative of a volatile young person who, through the experience of true love and the profound sadness upon losing it, gains maturity. Seeing the error of his ways, Gilgamesh is transformed; it's a powerful and relatable story. We also saw in the Epic a four-thousand-year-old message about protecting our environment-we've highlighted that. Finally, we have taken a magnifying glass to Gilgamesh's relationship with Enkidu. In the Epic, their friendship is ambiguous but extraordinarily affectionate. In Andrew George's authoritative translation, there is talk of Gilgamesh "caressing" his friend and loving him "like a wife." We found our hero's apparent homosexuality essential to understanding his emotional journey. And isn't it fascinating that same-sex attraction is arguably an aspect of the oldest written story humanity has?

Every role was composed for the singers who are premiering this opera, and their musical personalities and expressive proclivities have been encoded with love and admiration into the fabric of the score. Writing for the virtuosic combined forces of Australian String Quartet and Ensemble Offspring has meant that the instrumental lines have gained a complexity and detail quite different from those of an 'Opera' orchestra; each scene is focussed around specific colours and notes which branch out like an arboreal system to encompass the enormous expressive shifts and character arcs in the Epic. The addition of live electronics has allowed for a further layer of transformation: from the human to the fantastical/metahuman/eternal and back. The Prelude holds the musical 'potential' of the whole opera - as Enkidu is created, so too is the world of harmony and timbral associations which will eventually form the mysteries and revelations several hours later. A whole Gilgamesh- specific musical grammar had to be made which could be capable of adapting, continuing, rejecting, renewing or reinventing the practices of almost half a millennium of operatic writing as needed by this extraordinary story.

To shape air into sound, to propel sound into time, and to use the resulting music to interrogate life. These are any composer's reasons for creating, and Gilgamesh has consumed and distilled years of thought into a vast, complex, impossible and human journey.

Jack Symonds & Louis Garrick

Published by: Australian Music Centre — 1 facsimile score (216p. -- A3 (portrait))

Difficulty: Advanced — Complex vocal and instrumental parts, many advanced techniques, virtuosity over a sustained period

Duration: 2 hours, 30 mins

Commissioned by Sydney Chamber Opera, Carriageworks, Australian String Quartet, Ensemble Offspring, Phoenix Central Park.

First performance by Australian String Quartet, Ensemble Offspring, Jeremy Kleeman, Mitchell Riley, Jane Sheldon, Jessica O'Donoghue, Daniel Szesiong Todd, Jack Symonds — 28 Sep 24. Carriageworks, Sydney/Eora.

Includes program and performance notes.

Typeset edition.

ISMN: 979-0-67316-496-3