Missing is a 2017 chamber opera with a libretto by Marie Clements and music by Brian Current. Co-commissioned by Pacific Opera Victoria and City Opera Vancouver, its topic is missing and murdered Indigenous women. [1]
The libretto for the work was developed by Marie Clements prior to the selection of the composer. Four different composers were asked to set a portion of this libretto, and their settings were anonymized and sung before a jury to select the work's ultimate composer (Brian Current). [2]
The compositional style is spare, reminiscent of a "chamber music suite". [3] It "eschews familiar operatic conventions such as showy arias, huge choruses and a linear plot". [4] The opera is in English and Gitxsan, an indigenous language spoken in the traditional territory along much of the Highway of Tears. [5] [6]
The opera's unofficial premiere in November 2017 was before the "community of the missing" in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, one of the opera's two settings. This was followed by a five-night run in each of Vancouver and Victoria later in the month. [7] The show was directed by renowned Canadian director Peter Hinton.
Anchorage Opera presents the American premiere in March 2023. [8]
The opera presents a dual narrative. The primary narrative focuses on Ava, a young white woman who is thrown into a tree during a car crash and sees the body of an indigenous woman known as "Native Girl". This experience makes such an impression on Ava that she adopts many elements of Gitxsan culture, and later sees the murder of Native Girl in her dreams. The secondary narrative focuses on the grief of Native Girl's brother and mother. [3]
A review in Vancouver Magazine states that Missing "lays the foundation for a bridge between two cultural solitudes that must work together... to give birth to a new Canada". [9] According to Opera Canada , "As an opera, Missing is under-written. As an important piece of theatre that builds over its short 80 minutes to a shatteringly emotional conclusion... [it] is something every Canadian should see". [3]
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Gitxsan are an Indigenous people in Canada whose home territory comprises most of the area known as the Skeena Country in English. Gitksan territory encompasses approximately 35,000 km2 (14,000 sq mi) of land, from the basin of the upper Skeena River from about Legate Creek to the Skeena's headwaters and its surrounding tributaries. Part of the Tsimshianic language group, their culture is considered to be part of the civilization of the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, although their territory lies in the Interior rather than on the Coast. They were at one time also known as the Interior Tsimshian, a term which also included the Nisga'a, the Gitxsan's neighbours to the north. Their neighbours to the west are the Tsimshian while to the east the Wetʼsuwetʼen, an Athapaskan people, with whom they have a long and deep relationship and shared political and cultural community.
Marie Clements is a Canadian Métis playwright, performer, director, producer and screenwriter. She was the founding artistic director of Urban Ink Productions, and is currently co-artistic director of Red Diva Projects, and director of her new film company Working Pajama Lab Entertainment. Clements lives on Galiano Island, British Columbia. As a writer she has worked in a variety of media including theatre, performance, film, multi-media, radio and television.
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