Gilgamesh
The Rock Opera
Book, Music and Lyrics by Andrea Adriani.
A Sung-Through Symphonic & Progressive Rock Opera based on the Epic of Gilgamesh.
A fusion of the oldest epic poem in human history and the language of progressive and symphonic rock.
Versatile Staging & Production Formats
Full Staged Production: Complete theatrical staging featuring a streamlined lead cast of 6 vocalists (supported by strategic role-doubling) alongside a full SATB choir and live rock/symphonic orchestra.
Symphonic Rock Concert: A turnkey, high-impact concert format designed for arenas, open-air festivals, and symphonic venues (requiring minimal set infrastructure).
Listen to selected audio demos of the main songs:
Listen to more demos on SoundCloud.
Demo vocals and virtual arrangements rendered via ACE Studio based on original full scores and libretto.
Gilgamesh began as a question: why has no one made a rock opera out of the oldest story in the world?
The Epic of Gilgamesh predates Homer by fifteen centuries. It contains a tyrant, a wild man, a goddess scorned, a monster in a forest, a great flood, and a hero who travels to the edge of the earth in search of immortality — and comes home empty-handed. It is a story about power, loss, and the limits of human striving.
Rock opera is not an arbitrary choice of form. The epic was originally performed — chanted, sung, ritualised. The distance between that ancient oral tradition and the amplified, percussive language of progressive rock is shorter than it appears. Both are concerned with myth, with excess, with the body, with mortality. Both demand an audience that listens with its whole self. The work asks what this story feels like from the inside, in the present tense, at full volume.
Gilgamesh loses everything he fights for. He returns to his city, looks up at its walls, and understands — for the first time — that they had always been enough.
That is the rock opera. That is the ending. Everything else is the journey.
Mesopotamia, 2700 B.C.
The people of Uruk complain to the gods about their arrogant, tyrannical king Gilgamesh, two-thirds divine. The gods create Enkidu, a wild man living among animals, as his counterpart. A hunter sends the temple prostitute Shamat to lure Enkidu from the herd; she persuades him to challenge Gilgamesh, who has foreseen his arrival in a dream and consulted his mother, Ninsun.
Enkidu interrupts Gilgamesh’s droit du seigneur at a wedding. They fight, recognize each other’s strength, and become friends. Thirsting for glory, Gilgamesh defies the elders and sets out with Enkidu, protected by Ninsun’s prayers, to kill Humbaba, the ogre guarding the Cedar Forest. They slay him despite his pleas for mercy. Enkidu, struck by a magnificent cedar, vows to build a temple gate from it.
Gilgamesh spurns the goddess Ishtar, who persuades her father Anu to send the Bull of Heaven against Uruk. The heroes slay it; Ishtar calls for the gods’ vengeance. Enkidu falls ill, dreaming the gods decide his fate. On his deathbed he curses the cedar gate and Shamat, then blesses them.
Devastated by his newfound mortality, Gilgamesh seeks Utnapishtim, who knows the secret of eternal life. He passes the scorpion-men at the world’s edge and wins over the brewer Siduri, who sends him to the ferryman Urshanabi. Having destroyed the Stone Crew, he must pole the boat across the Waters of Death.
Utnapishtim tells him of the Great Flood and of a youth-restoring seabed plant. Gilgamesh retrieves it, but a serpent steals it while he rests. Back in Uruk with Urshanabi, he shows him the city’s walls, his true legacy.
This is a sung-through rock opera, comprising 39 musical numbers, with a total running time of 2+ hours.
The text is designed for musical performance rather than spoken theatre.
Song titles mark formal musical numbers and act as structural divisions within continuous scenes.
Stage directions are minimal and functional, serving as performance cues for staging, lighting, and movement.
| Cast of Characters | Vocal range |
|---|---|
| ISHTAR, goddess of love and war | Mezzo-soprano |
| ENKIDU, Gilgamesh’s counterpart | Tenor |
| THE HUNTER | Bass-Baritone |
| THE HUNTER’S FATHER | Bass-Baritone |
| SHAMAT, the temple harlot | Soprano |
| GILGAMESH, king of Uruk | Tenor |
| NINSUN, Gilgamesh’s mother | Alto |
| HUMBABA, the ogre of the cedar forest | Bass |
| SCORPION-MEN (2), wardens of the mountain | Baritone |
| SIDURI, alewife of the gods | Mezzo-soprano |
| URSHANABI, the ferryman | Baritone |
| UTNAPISHTIM, the Far-Away | Bass-Baritone |
Ensembles (SATB), dancers, performers and walk-ons.
For a streamlined, highly cost-effective production, role doubling among principal characters is fully supported.
Download the industry press kit:
Full Libretto/Lyrics:
Lead sheets:
One-sheet PDF:
Andrea Adriani
Foligno (PG), Italy
Gilgamesh – The Musical
© 2026 Andrea Adriani. All rights reserved.Selected passages freely adapted from the Standard Babylonian Version of the Epic of Gilgamesh, based on public-domain source material. The dramatic characterisations, situations, and dialogue in this work are fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, actual events, or organisations is entirely coincidental.Registration:
U.S. Copyright Office, PAu [pending]
Writers Guild of America, West, #2000674