Gormenghast (opera) that "Gormenghast is, both in spirit and form, grand opera. But elements and characteristics of musical, the rock concert, and modern dance theatre play equally important roles within it". At a meeting of the UK's Mervyn Peake Society in 1995, Schmidt played three excerpts from the opera-in-progress, recorded on audio cassette—the music for the castle kitchen scene, a duet sung by the twins Cora and Clarice, and Steerpike's drunken song as he climbs to the top of the castle. The music for the castle kitchen had been recorded in his own kitchen using saucepans, plates, spoons, and forks as the
Titus Awakes in the Overlook editions (albeit in both single volume and omnibus). Mills (2005) comments on the irony of the narrator's comment that Titus would never again see Gormenghast Castle, for "even in the first proposed chapter, Titus returns in a dream to Gormenghast and the fight between Swelter and Flay." The textual repetition in the preadventure was commented upon by Chris Sandow, who stated that "[t]he fragments are clearly no more than early drafts". However, it is not clear that the repetition is an error. Early in 2010 Sebastian Peake announced that his daughter had found Maeve Gilmore's notebook MS