The acclaimed Scottish novelist Louise Welsh has written her first full scale opera for the new season of the national opera company.
The Devil Inside has been written by Welsh, author of The Cutting Room, The Bullet Trick and A Lovely Way to Burn, with the composer Stuart MacRae for the 2015/16 season of Scottish Opera.
The new season, ten shows, two world premieres, six new productions and 111 performances in 46 venues across 41 towns over the next 12 months.
The Devil Inside is based on Robert Louis Stevenson's short story The Bottle Imp.
The pair first joined forces for the experimental short opera Five:15 series before they worked again on their South Bank Sky Arts Award-winning Ghost Patrol in 2012.
The Devil Inside is a co-commission and production with Music Theatre Wales and will be performed in Glasgow and Edinburgh next January.
The opera, with a four-person cast, is a tale of "greed and compulsion".
It follows a couple, James and Catherine, played by Ben McAteer and Rachel Kelly, whose lives fall apart after they achieve happiness with the contents of a supernatural bottle.
The opera lasts one hour and forty five minutes.
It will be directed by Matthew Richardson with the music conducted by Michael Rafferty.
The new music director of Scottish Opera, Stuart Stratford, said: "I'm excited by Stuart MacRae and Louise Welsh's new opera, The Devil Inside.
"Conducting new music has been an important part of my career and I believe it is essential that opera finds new expression in the contemporary world."
The season also features Bizet's Carmen, Handel's Ariodante, Dvorak's Rusalka, Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado - never before staged by Scottish Opera - HMS Pinafore and Mozart's Cosi fan tutte.
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