Ghost Patrol is a one-act chamber opera composed by Stuart MacRae to an English-language libretto by Louise Welsh.
[1][2] The composer, Stuart MacRae, and his librettist, British crime-writer Louise Welsh, had previously collaborated in the program with Remembrance Day, a 15-minute miniature opera created in 2009.
[3] The plot of Ghost Patrol recounts the fall-out after heavy-drinking landlord Alasdair discovers that a homeless thief he has apprehended in his pub is someone he knows, Sam, who had been in the same army platoon as him.
[2] The opera has a running time of about 58 minutes and is scored for three singers (tenor, baritone, and soprano) accompanied by a small orchestra of 4 woodwind, 2 brass, percussion, harp and strings.
[5] Critical opinion admired the dramatic nature of the opera[6] and MacRae's "constantly simmering orchestral style",[7] employing prerecorded tapes and prominent percussion, but some felt that the work is overlong,[8] that the "punchy ideas haven't been smoothly stitched together" and that the libretto "tries to say too much".