Scottish Opera

Novelist Louise Welsh and composer Stuart MacRae are both well known in their respective fields. Their creative partnership, born of Five:15 Operas Made in Scotland and last seen in South Bank Sky Arts Award-winning Ghost Patrol(2012), here returns with a tale of greed and compulsion inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson’s short story The Bottle Imp.

A bottle with the power to grant your heart’s desires could be yours. Sounds appealing? There’s a catch. You can only sell it for less than you paid for it, and, if you die while owning it, your soul goes straight to hell. James uses the bottle to get all he ever dreamed of, and then sells it. Happily married to Catherine, he feels his life is complete...until an awful discovery begins to unravel their life together, with devastating consequences.