Gormenghast (opera) Gormenghast (opera) Gormenghast is an opera in three acts composed by Irmin Schmidt to an English-language libretto by Duncan Fallowell, based on Mervyn Peake's "Gormenghast Trilogy". It premiered at the Opernhaus Wuppertal on 15 November 1998. Mervyn Peake's "Gormenghast Trilogy", on which the opera is based, is a Gothic tale recounting the rise of the evil Steerpike from a kitchen boy in Gormenghast castle to total domination of the castle and its aristocratic inhabitants. Benjamin Britten had contemplated composing an opera based on the trilogy in the 1950s, but then changed his mind. Irmin Schmidt and his librettist Duncan Fallowell,
Titus Awakes Titus Awakes Titus Awakes is the editorial title applied to a novel being planned by Mervyn Peake at the time he became too ill to write, about 1960. It was to have been the fourth novel in the Gormenghast series, after "Titus Groan", "Gormenghast", and "Titus Alone". "Titus Awakes" remains unfinished, as the author succumbed to illness before the work could be completed. In the 1970s Peake's widow, Maeve Gilmore, wrote a version of "Titus Awakes" to which she gave the title "Search Without End". It runs to 65,000 words, as counted on the typescript that she asked Peter Winnington