Stevenson was always 'the writer's writer'. Geniuses like Jorge Luis Borges, Bertolt Brecht, Marcel Proust, Arthur Conan Doyle, Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Vladimir Nabokov, J. M. Barrie, and G. K. Chesterton all worshipped at his altar.
Now one of Scotland's most acclaimed contemporary novelists, Louise Welsh, has told how she was inspired by her admiration of RLS to write an opera based on his most famous short horror story.
Welsh, currently professor of creative writing at Glasgow University, renowned for The Cutting Room and Tamburlaine Must Die, has created the original opera in collaboration with composer Stuart MacRae.
She will speak about the adaptation of Stevenson’s The Bottle Imp - a twisted take on the genie in the bottle myth - titled The Devil Inside, at a free event in the capital on Friday as part of RLS Day.
Welsh, a lover of the gothic which RLS excelled in, said: “I think if you were to stop any Scottish writer and ask them to list their top three writers that made them want to do write they would mention Stevenson. He’s always been number one for me.
“I remember reading him as a child. I remember being terrified by Treasure Island, you know, by Blind Pew and the Black Spot. When you read that now it still has that visceral power.
“When we think about Stevenson we think about Treasure Island, Jekyll and Hyde, Kidnapped, but he also wrote a lot of short stories and travel books.
“He wrote this massive body of work and I’ve been reading him since I was child but I’ve still not read everything.
“Jekyll and Hyde I read every two years, I’d say. I’ll be reading a bit of Treasure Island out loud at the festival this week.
“I’m reading some of his letters just now which he wrote after he ended up in Samoa, mainly because of his health. He thinks a lot about home. He loves Scotland and he knows he’s never going to see it again. He’s writing about Scotland when he dies.”
Welsh believes Stevenson’s work remains relevant today and will also appeal to future generations ... but there is one aspect of modern life which she would have liked him to tackle - the internet. Like Jekyll and Hyde the web has two faces - one good, one bad.
She said: “I think he’d have written brilliantly about it. It’s a great force for good but it has this dark side. I think he’d have found that fascinating.”
Welsh’s latest work The Devil Inside takes Stevenson’s The Bottle Imp and gives the story a contemporary twist.
She said: “It’s set very much now – in the 21st century – in a world people will recognise. But it’s also a world where magic exists and we just decided to go with that.
“The Bottle Imp is a variation on various fairy stories. Stevenson took inspiration from folk tales and we’ve taken it and adapted it for now.
“There’s an idea of big commerce and big property ownership as being a measure of wealth and success but it’s also got universal themes of love and sacrifice.
“One of the things I liked about the Stevenson story which we have in our story is the idea of men and women being equal and people in relationships being able to make sacrifices for each other.
“There’s real jeopardy in it and I think that’s the thing that connects to the more well-known of Stevenson’s stories, like Treasure Island, which is an adventure.
“I have read the Bottle Imp many times and there’s always a bit you get to when you wonder how the hell they’re going to get out of that.
“That’s what I think I’d like people to have when they watch the opera – to enter this world. It’s what Stevenson does. He pulls us into a world which is completely absorbing, exciting, where you care about the characters and where you find extreme anxiety where you don’t think he or she is going to escape this.”
Welsh hopes that those who don’t ordinarily go to the opera will be encouraged to try it out when The Devil Inside is staged in January.
She said: “Opera is something that everyone should go to but people sometimes look at it and think it’s not for me, it’s for posh people. You have this image from James Bond movies where the men go in dinner suits and the women in fancy frocks. It’s not like that at all. It’s not stuffy.
“When I was little I thought it was a thing for those and such as those but now it’s a very rich part of my life. I’d love it if other people had that feeling too.”
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