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,
Gormenghast (castle) Qufu in Shandong Province, the birthplace of Confucius. His descendants lived there for two thousand years, practising obscure rituals worthy of Gormenghast in a sprawling mansion with hundreds of rooms (partially destroyed by a fire in 1877). The eldest son in each generation inherited the title of Yansheng Duke. The last to live in the Mansion was the posthumous son of the 76th Duke (and therefore the 77th holder of the title, just like Titus Groan). Born in 1920, the 77th Yansheng duke was forced to flee to the island of Taiwan in 1937 when the Japanese invaded China. The