This opera was written with the financial assistance from Scottish Arts in the form of a Creative Scotland Award. Kaspar Hauser, The Child of Europe won the stage category in the 2011 British Composer Awards with the Jury citation reading: “Kaspar Hauser is a powerful and disturbing story told with theatrical flair, dramatic pacing and excellent characterisation”. In the early 19th century, The Child of Europe was the term ascribed to the person whom we know as Kaspar Hauser. Uncertainty, enigma and disagreement surround his birth. And his death. Accounts of his possible origins differ widely. Was he a child of the royal house of Baden? A vagrant on the make? He is recorded as having been found on Whit Monday, 26th May, 1828 at 4pm, standing in Unschlittplatz in Nuremberg with a letter in his hands, addressed to the captain of the cavalry. The young man – estimated to be fifteen or sixteen, though small – repeated his name and the request: I want to be a horseman like my father. The sunlight evidently pained him, as did his boots. It is believed by some – and doubted by others – that he spent most of his childhood and early adolescence locked in a dungeon, fed on bread and water and constrained. His speech was limited and strange but he responded well to the ministrations of the various guardians through whose hands he passed. These included Friedrich Daumer, scholar, and Anselm von Feuerbach, a retired lawyer. The person calling himself Kaspar Hauser learned to read and write, to perform ‘intellectual demonstrations’ and was considered by his supporters as a ‘halfmurdered soul’, a damaged innocent abroad. His first sight of the moonlit sky caused him to weep, though his responses to the world were not all romantic; he disliked cats and the smell of flowers. Initially he was fêted, studied, considered a celebrity or a curiosity. Articles were published. Daumer and von Feuerbach were writing books about him. The wind changed. Kaspar Hauser, the intriguing ‘find’, became gloomy, difficult to manage and ultimately, for Philip, Earl of Stanhope, his final mentor, a thorn in the flesh. In the four years since he was found waiting in Unschlittplatz, two attempts were made on his life; stabbings. The first made him lose his innocence – and his ability to see in the dark. The second did for him. His assailant was never found. This is one version of The Child of Europe’s time in the world. It is not only his birth and death which are shrouded in mystery. It is not only a story of child neglect but also one of exploitation.