An opera based around the death of the government weapons expert Dr David Kelly is part of a new season from Scotland's national opera company.

Tickets for Scottish Opera's second mini-opera season, Five:15, have already sold out in Glasgow and yesterday the company announced an additional date for a performance of the 15-minute works, which also tell stories by Peter Carey and Herman Melville.

The most contemporary of the five operas, which will debut at the Oran Mor venue on February 20, will address the death of Dr Kelly, who took his own life in 2003 after being identified as the source of a claim in a BBC report that the UK government had exaggerated the threat from weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The libretto for the opera, called Death of a Scientist, depicts a man "in crisis (who) stands on the edge, not knowing which way to jump", and is by Zinnie Harris, the acclaimed writer of plays such as Further Than the Furthest Thing as well as TV show Spooks. Harris said she had decided to explore the fate of Dr Kelly because his story would be well-known to the audience and his suicide was such an important and poignant moment in recent political history.

Another opera in the series concerns an elderly couple of serial killers and has been written by Scottish writer Louise Welsh, author of The Cutting Room and the Bullet Trick.

The other operas in the series this year include Happy Story, written by David Fennessy and Nicholas Bone, based on a short story by Peter Carey; The Lightning Rod Man by Martin Dixon and Amy Parker, based on a story by Herman Melville; and White by Gareth Williams and Margaret McCartney.

Tickets for the additional performance of all five operas at Oran Mor, Glasgow, for February 21, go on sale today.

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