Suicide of weapons expert David Kelly was a tragedy – but does it make a fit subject for an opera?

Published on Wednesday 7 January 2009 20:57

THE suicide of weapons expert Dr David Kelly will be re-enacted on the Scottish stage as an opera centred on the final moments of his life, it emerged yesterday.

Death of a Scientist deals with the last minutes of the Ministry of Defence employee caught up in the row over Iraq's supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction in the build-up to war. Tenor Richard Rowe plays Dr Kelly, who died in July 2003 facing huge public pressure as the suspected source of media leaks.

Dr Kelly's story provoked many conspiracy theories.

Writer Zinnie Harris said: "It is about the decision to take your own life, to explore the crisis of being right in the middle of a political storm.

"We wanted to take an iconic political moment and explore it as an opera."

Death of a Scientist, with a cast of four singers, is one of five newly composed short operas being produced by Scottish Opera in its Five:15 series. A second, Remembrance Day, is a story of serial killing from Louise Welsh, known for her dark novels.

A friend of Dr Kelly, the broadcast journalist Tom Mangold, said yesterday: "Larger events than David's death have made fine opera. I just hope they stay with the truth and not the perception."

In the days before his death Dr Kelly faced massive pressure after being named as a possible source of a BBC report on the UK government's "sexing up" of its dossier on Iraq.

In 2004 Lord Hutton's inquiry concluded that Dr Kelly, 59, had killed himself by cutting his left wrist after taking painkillers.

A play at London's Tricycle Theatre, Justifying War, re- enacted the Hutton hearings.

But Death of a Scientist is more about Dr Kelly's own thoughts, said Ms Harris, a theatre director and screenwriter whose television credits include the intelligence drama Spooks. Her husband, John, wrote the music.

In the opera, Dr Kelly encounters several characters in his last minutes of life but it is unclear whether they are real or people inside his own head, she said.

"We wanted to go staight into a story that people knew," she said. "Inevitably you are drawn to things that have a dramatic impact."

The couple did not contact the Kelly family, she said, because the story was already in the public domain.

The critic Norman Lebrecht said yesterday: "Potentially, it's extremely interesting. It's entirely suitable to do these things in the theatre. We have had dramatisations of a whole range of trials and deaths.

"If it works as a work of art that will broaden the discussion maybe we will all learn some lessons from it."

Ms Welsh said her grisly opera, created with composer Stuart MacRae, was "really difficult to write".

"We lost sleep, and we hope the audience lose sleep after they come to see it," she said.

Of the Dr Kelly opera, she said: "I guess it depends how it's done, but it's certainly newsworthy and it's pretty poignant and horrible. It's most definitely a subject fit for drama. It's a horrible personal tragedy, but it's also politically and socially important."

BACKGROUND

PUBLIC appetite for modern opera based on gritty true-life tales seemed to be running strong yesterday. Scottish Opera said it was adding an extra performance to the Glasgow run of its Five:15 series of short new Scottish operas, opening next month.

The American composer John Adams has centred two well-known operas on contemporary dramas. The Death of Klinghoffer, performed recently at the Edinburgh International Festival, told the true story of the murder of an American hostage on the hijacked cruise ship the Achille Lauro. Adams's Nixon in China was centred on the story of US president Richard Nixon's historic visit in 1972.

The short operas could become full-length productions if they prove popular. They also include Happy Story, by David Fennessy and Nicholas Bone, based on the Peter Carey short story; The Lightning Rod Man, by Martin Dixon and Amy Parker; and White, by Margaret McCartney and Gareth Williams.