Final tragic days of Dr David Kelly in 5:15 series

His controversial death was a defining moment of the Blair era, almost bringing the Government to its knees. Now the suicide of David Kelly, the Iraq weapons inspector, is to take centre stage at Scottish Opera, with a provocative production examining the fraught moments before he took his own life.

Death of a Scientist, by the award-winning Edinburgh playwright Zinnie Harris, with music by her composer husband John, is part of Scottish Opera's Five:15 series. The scheme pairs leading writers with composers to create 15-minute chamber pieces, which may be developed into longer productions.

Last year's productions, featuring work by writers such as Ian Rankin and Alexander McCall Smith, were a critical and commercial hit, with Scottish Opera adding an extra night to satisfy audience demand. The latest works will be premiered in Glasgow this month.

Dr Kelly killed himself after being exposed as the source of a BBC report which claimed that the Government had “sexed up” a dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD). His body was found in a woodland area close to his home in Oxfordshire on July 18, 2003, a few days after he had appeared before a Commons select committee. He had taken an overdose of painkillers and cut his left wrist.
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Death of a Scientist is Ms Harris's first opera. She said that she hoped to convey the inner turmoil of a man making “a deeply difficult decision” against the complexities of the Iraq war, George Bush and Tony Blair's search for WMD, and the hunt for the source of the leak.

“The backdrop of how one man's actions affected the world was well known, and we thought what was missing from that was the emotional decision-making,” she said. “The opera starts with him walking into the sunshine and ends with his death. His story may be familiar, but what happened in between those points is totally conjecture.”

Ms Harris, 36, whose diverse body of work includes plays for the Royal Shakespeare Company and scripts for the BBC drama Spooks, is aware that the contentious subject matter is likely to raise eyebrows. “There has been a lot of plays and books about David Kelly, but there is a feeling that it is not for opera,” she said.

Despite the sensitivities surrounding the issue, she did not contact Dr Kelly's family to discuss the opera. Last year relatives condemned Cherie Blair for writing about his death in her memoirs. “We didn't approach the family because we have not exposed anything that was not in the public domain, and I think we have handled it responsibly,” Ms Harris said.

She said that the Iraq war had become a key theme for the arts world. “I don't think I am setting out to be controversial,” Ms Harris said. “As a writer living through the last five years it is difficult not to be ruminating on this territory. I think most of my contemporaries are trying to make moral sense of it too.”

The new Five:15 series has produced a diverse range of works. Louise Welsh, the novelist, has teamed up with Stuart MacRae to create Remembrance Day, about an elderly couple who relive their past with terrifying consequences, while White, written by Margaret McCartney, a national columnist, and composed by Gareth Williams, tackles the question of when it is appropriate to share confidences.

Happy Story, by David Fennessy, the musician and composer, and Nicholas Bone, the artistic director, is an adaptation of a Peter Carey short story, and The Lightning Rod Man is an adaptation of a short story by Herman Melville by Amy Parker, an emerging young music critic and Martin Dixon, the Glasgow composer.

Ms Welsh, whose opera is also her first, said that it had been an enjoyable experience. She said that she hoped to unsettle audiences with what she described as the shocking and dark content of her piece. She also wanted to challenge preconceptions about the elderly and ageing.

“There is an idea now that opera is something people get dressed up for, and pay lots of money, but traditionally it dealt with strong subjects, with lots of passion and lots of death, so perhaps we are just getting back to its popular roots,” she said.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article5679754.ece