has also composed five symphonies and a ballet, Kaki. Other musical compositions include the “Requiem: In Memoriam 9/11,” commissioned by the government of Thailand as a gift for the victims of the 9/11 events and inspired by the poetry of Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and T. S. Eliot. Stage works In 2000, he composed Madana, the first orchestral Western opera by a Thai composer and based on a Thai language play by King Rama VI. The opera was in English. His second opera on a Thai theme, Mae Naak, premiered in 2003 and a third opera, Ayodhya, was first performed in November, 2006. His opera The Silent Prince was premiered in Houston by Opera Vista on 15 October 2010. A fifth opera, Dan no Ura, received its premiere in August 2014 in Bangkok. He is currently at work on two operas, one an adaptation of his fantasy short story "The Fallen Country" and another about the life of Holocaust survivor, Helena Citronova. "The Snow Dragon", the adaptation of his fantasy story, is set to premiere 13 March 2015, at the Skylight Music Theatre in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, under the baton of Viswa Subbaraman. In 2012 his musical, Reya the Musical, based on a serialized novel by his mother which had already been made into a popular Thai TV soap, premiered at the Aksra Theatre in Bangkok and ran for twenty performances. A hybrid work combining ballet with opera, "Suriyothai", based on the life of a Thai Queen of the Ayuthaya Period, premiered on 23 August 2013. He is currently working on a second musical, "Pob—the Musical" for December 2015 release. Somtow is artistic director of Opera Siam. In 2006, Somtow Sucharitkul conducted the first Wagner opera in Southeast Asia, Das Rheingold, as part of a five-year project to bring the entire Ring Cycle to Southeast Asia by 2010. Various delays afflicted the project and it has yet to resume. He has conducted the Thailand premieres of many key repertoire operas such as Thaïs, Otello, and The Rape of Lucretia. He embarked on a venture to conduct all of Mahler's symphonies in Thailand, and the cycle was completed with No. 2 in 2015. Performing ensembles In the 1970s Somtow Sucharitkul formed the Temple of Dawn Consort with Dnu Huntrakul and Bruce Gaston, an eclectic performing ensemble devoted to a fusion of Thai and Western music styles and instruments, performing music by these