The world’s oldest poem. Opera’s most cutting-edge artists.

Opera Australia, Sydney Chamber Opera and Carriageworks present Gilgamesh, in association with Australian String Quartet and Ensemble Offspring.

The ancient and contemporary collide to dazzling effect in this world premiere.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is humanity’s oldest epic written poem. Emerging from ancient Mesopotamian mythology, it 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.

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.

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), Gilgamesh is an epic that must be experienced.

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.

Symonds conducts a cast of Australian contemporary opera specialists. Jeremy Kleeman and Mitchell Riley play Gilgamesh and the beast Enkidu, joined by Jane Sheldon, Jessica O’Donoghue and Daniel Szesiong Todd.

Sydney Chamber Opera premieres the newest opera by leading Australian composer Mary Finsterer.

Antarctica explores the historical, mythical and scientific conceptions and stories about the southern continent. With a mesmerising combination of musical elements from early and new music styles, we are transported into another world.

This fictional tale begins with three characters from the Age of Discovery miraculously conjured from the memory of a young girl: a cartographer, a natural scientist and a philosopher travelling by ship to Antarctica, all with different dreams and expectations concerning the mysterious landscape. But what they find is far greater than themselves…

Created by the outstanding production team behind La Passion de Simone, 2022 SCO Creative Residents Imara Savage, Elizabeth Gadsby, Alexander Berlage and Cannes award-winning filmmaker Mike Daly will interpret this new work alongside some of SCO’s favourite singers and the legendary Dutch new music ensemble Asko|Schönberg. Finsterer’s first opera for SCO, Biographica was described by The Australian as an “outstanding new opera deserving a permanent place in the repertory”, and expectations are high for her second. 

In order to prepare for her new opera, Finsterer organised a symposium at the University of Tasmania where she and librettist Tom Wright could meet with scientists from the Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies. In an age of increasing concern for our ecology, the displacement of populations and a heightened awareness of the vulnerability of our oceans, Antarctica is also an urgent story for today.