A TERM gaining currency in recent years is the Anthropocene, a word popularised around 20 years ago by atmospheric chemist Paul J Crutzen to denote the influence of human behaviour on the planet’s natural systems.

Though not yet officially recognised as a distinct geological era, it is increasingly used to describe the impact of humanity on Earth’s ecosystems and climate.

In the polar regions, changes in climate are the most extreme and the effects of pollution come earliest, an early-warning signal to the rest of the planet. The poles have long been places of intrigue and adventure, bravery and Captain Oates-style fortitude, with stories of disappeared expeditions and lost fortunes.

Such romantic notions are now tarnished by the knowledge of environmental degradation, the oppression of indigenous peoples and human failure. Around the same time that Crutzen began to sound the alarm about the Anthropocene, evidence was being disclosed that Oates had fathered a child with a girl of 12.

It is this complex, highly charged backdrop that informs a new work commissioned by Scottish Opera from composer Stuart MacRae and librettist and author Louise Welsh.

Premiering on January 24 at Theatre Royal Glasgow, it is then performed at Edinburgh’s King’s Theatre before touring to London’s Hackney Empire for two performances presented in association with The Royal Opera.

MacRae’s score for Anthropocene will be conducted by Stuart Stratford, Scottish Opera’s music director, while direction comes from Matthew Richardson and stage design by Samal Blak. The three were also the award-winning team behind MacRae and Welsh’s The Devil Inside, an operatic update of Robert Louis Stevenson’s creepy tale The Bottle Imp.

A piece which sees a prominent role for former Scottish Opera emerging artist Jennifer France, Anthropocene features an ensemble cast including Scottish soprano Jeni Bern and English baritone Stephen Gadd – two stand-out performers from Scottish Opera’s recent Rigoletto – playing a group

of scientists on expedition in the Arctic.

When the team becomes trapped in the ice, heightened tensions threaten to split the group, exposing them to perilous conditions and frozen isolation. The scenario evokes a fraught atmosphere not unlike the Gothic-inspired thrillers of Welsh, whose recently completed Plague Times Trilogy saw Scotland descend into dog-eat-dog chaos after a pandemic.

“Anthropocene is one of the most exciting projects I have been involved with,” says Welsh, who is also a professor of creative writing at the University of Glasgow. “This is my fourth opera with Stuart MacRae for Scottish Opera and it is an honour to write words which I know he will set to a unique palette of music.”

Welsh and MacRae’s musical partnership goes back to 2009 when they collaborated on a 15-minute opera for that year’s Remembrance Day. Before The Devil Inside in 2016, the two also created Ghost Patrol in 2012, a one-act opera about secrets and their consequences which won a South Bank Sky Arts Award and was nominated for an Olivier.

Their new production will “keep the audience gripped throughout”, says Stratford, who describes Anthropocene as an “incredibly imaginative story of discovery, betrayal and violent sacrifice with daring and dazzling virtuoso orchestral textures.”

MacRae says it was “a joy” to work on Anthropocene with Welsh and that the writer brings “depth, colour and variety” to the story.

“The themes of Anthropocene are both perennial and up-to-the-minute,” says Welsh. “Human beings have always striven to conquer distant and hostile territories.

“The 21st century has opened the field to rich amateurs who might previously have stayed at home and charted on maps the progress of expeditions they had funded. Anthropocene is a story of over-wielding ambition, murder, human sacrifice and thwarted love. It is also an exploration of the tensions between magic and science.”

MacRae says the essence of the Anthropocene is “the triumph of human self-interest over nature and over other humans”.

He adds: “It is also the cause of manmade climate change, countless environmental catastrophes and the exploitation of marginalised peoples by wealthy nations and individuals.

“When faced with extreme isolation, a loss of control over their destiny, and personal catastrophe, the appearance of a mysterious outsider poses an impossible dilemma for the crew of the Anthropocene, and becomes the focus of temptation, sympathy, ambition, empathy and fascination.”

You can find out more about how the production was created at free pre-show talks on January 26 and February 2, the same dates as audio-described performances for audience members with a visual impairment.

Jan 24 and 26, Theatre Royal Glasgow, 7.15pm, £12 to £32. Jan 31 and February 2, King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, 7.15pm, £16 to £32. www.scottishopera.org.uk @ScottishOpera