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,
Mervyn Peake Drawings" (1965), and "A Reverie of Bone" (1967). After his death came "Selected Poems" (1972), followed by "Peake's Progress" in (1979 – though the Penguin edition of 1982, with many corrections, including a whole stanza inadvertently omitted from the hardback edition, is to be preferred). "The Collected Poems of Mervyn Peake" was published by Carcanet Press in June 2008. Other collections include "The Drawings of Mervyn Peake" (1974), "Writings and Drawings" (1974), and "Mervyn Peake: the man and his art" (2006). A collected edition of the works, issued to celebrate Peake's centenary year, has been announced for publication by Queen