Making an opera of the story of Kaspar Hauser has become a serious undertaking

• RSAMD's production of Kaspar Hauser. Picture: Complimentary

Take the extreme case of one student at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama's postgraduate opera school, who was locked in a dark cupboard for an entire day to experience what it would be like to be incarcerated in a cramped, windowless cell, all in the interests of getting to grips with the title role in a new opera by Rory Boyle, which receives its premiere on Saturday at the RSAMD.

"He was perfectly happy to go along with it," says Ayrshire-born Boyle, whose 90-minute opera Kaspar Hauser tells the macabre story of a 16-year-old feral child who, in 1828, suddenly appeared on the streets of Ansbach, Germany, claiming to have spent his life to that point imprisoned alone in a two-metre square cell, with only bread and water to eat, a straw bed to sleep on and a toy horse for company.

From the glimpse I caught of Anna Jones's set design last week – an opulent, spacious scene of dilapidation and decay shrouded in blackness and smoke – the darkness isn't confined to a cupboard. But then, it's hardly a pretty story, either literally or psychologically. "You get two stabbings, a peep show and heavy petting," says Boyle, who has been fascinated by the operatic potential of this story for years, and was just looking for the right opportunity to make it happen.

According to Hauser's written account of his own life, he claimed he was deprived of all human contact during his infant imprisonment, expect for the mysterious hooded man who suddenly appeared, taught him to write his name, led him to freedom in Nuremberg (but left him to his own devices), and gave him the only words he knew how to utter: "I want to be a cavalryman just like my father."

His case became famous in Bavaria, leading to rumours he was either of princely descent, brought up in the wild by wolves, or simply the perpetrator of a freakish hoax. But it all ended in tragedy when, at the age of 21, the so-called Child of Europe was stabbed to death by a killer who was never identified. His epitaph says it all: "Here lies Kaspar Hauser, riddle of his time. His birth was unknown, his death mysterious".

"If this has a relevance at all to our time, it is with regard to child neglect and exploitation," Boyle explains, and to that end his characters – from the Man in Black who never shows his face, to the wild man Boris (an Ozzy Osbourne figure, eating the heads off chickens) and the dubiously benevolent Earl Stanhope – have a distasteful edge.

The tale's transformation into an opera is the result of a spooky meeting of minds. Boyle and his Edinburgh-based librettist Dilys Rose had already worked together on a project with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra that resulted in the large-scale choral work The Fires of Beltane. "We were sitting in an Edinburgh pub after that show, thinking it would be good to work together again. In one of these strange moments, Dilys said she had been fascinated by the very same story that had so intrigued me."

Kaspar the opera quickly grew legs: Creative Scotland came up with the funding, Boyle – who teaches composition at the RSAMD – found immediate willingness among his Academy colleagues to stage it, and it was all systems go. Saturday's premiere, which is directed by Frederic Wake-Walker and conducted by Scottish Opera's head of music Derek Clark, is the first of four performances running next week.

The most interesting challenge facing Boyle, however, was to come up with a work specifically aimed at emerging voices, namely the student cast of the Academy's Opera School. "You just don't get operas that address the constraints of singers at this early stage in their development. They are coming out of opera schools and have such a big jump to make into the mainstream repertoire. The vocal style of this opera is reflective of that," says Boyle.

But by making it more conducive to young voices – there are 20 sung roles – does not mean that Boyle has compromised on artistic aspirations. If he had any model in mind for the 14 narrative scenes that make up the opera, it would probably be Debussy's Pellas et Mlisande. "Kaspar is an intimate opera, operating on several levels, with no grand gestures, no chorus," he explains. "The derelict theatre on stage is as representative of Kaspar's distressed mind as it is of his hard, raw environment."

For the director, Frederic Wake-Walker, that ambiguity has been a vital catalyst in creating a staging that makes sense of it all.

"It is a powerful story, but one that leaves so many holes for the audience to think," he says. "My aim has been to maintain as much of that ambiguity as I could, and that's given me a lot of freedom to create a strong piece of drama. It has become a lot darker than I ever thought it would."

The same goes, presumably, for the young singer who found himself holed up in complete darkness just to get into the troubled mind of Kaspar Hauser. They take their roles very seriously at the RSAMD.

The RSAMD Opera School performs Rory Boyle's new opera Kaspar Hauser in the Academy's Athenaeum Theatre on 20 March, 22 March, 24 March and 25 March. More information at boxoffice.rsamd.ac.uk