EXPRESSING THEIR TEARS
Opera focuses on missing women
From magic flutes to Dons doing deals with the Devil, to Valkyries and seasonal rites, operas take on a lot of topics. Even in light of that fact, City Opera Vancouver and Pacific Opera Victoria commissioning a chamber work based upon the Canadian national tragedy of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls stands out.
How do you translate something so raw, happening right now and in the news today, onto the musical stage? The task fell to Metis playwright Marie Clements and Juno Award-winning composer Brian Current. The result is a new chamber opera titled Missing, which has its world premiere in Vancouver this November.
“The shameful fact that this is an everyday current event meant that we needed to create a work that could be personal and that both native and non-native people could identify with and experience right there and not at arm’s length or in a news report that can be dismissed,” said Marie Clements.
“I really wanted to create a piece about two young women at a time in their life when anything is possible, who were loved and had good families, and what would happen if they met by chance, if their paths crossed, and how it would affect their stories forever.”
Missing is set between Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and B.C.’s Highway 16, the Highway of Tears where at least 18 women have disappeared or been discovered murdered since 1969. The story follows the intertwined stories of a white girl, named Ava, who is drawn to the language and traditions and monumental hardships of the “unknown Native Girl” she crosses paths with. As her community struggles toward reconciliation, Ava experiences the same internally. Clements says that the story is meant to reflect the real fear that real people feel for their children.
“What would happen if my daughter didn’t come home, it’s a real universal fear that everyone experiences, but it’s one that is particularly close to a lot of native parents about their daughters,” said Clements. “This is a national/international problem, but choosing the Highway of Tears came along with the contradiction of this stunning, beautiful land and the realization that so many of our women are buried in our province. Why aren’t we all trying to do something to prevent this epidemic?”
So Missing is a call to action. It is also intended to honour the 1,200plus missing and murdered First Nations, Inuit and Metis women and girls in Canada.
“Because it is a modern opera and an active tale, it made sense to have the opera in the both Gitksan and English,” she said. “We grieve in different languages and we experience life in different languages, so it made sense to go back to the original language of our country in the story.”
Incorporating those languages, the different cultures and bringing it together into something musical that can be performed by the cast and the seven-piece orchestra under conductor Timothy Long fell to composer Brian Current. He says when he was approached by Pacific Opera about the project, it became more than another musical entertainment.
“I’m not an Indigenous person, but I hope my role in this is to lead people to have the similar eye-opening experience about this issue that I had while I was working on this, and that will lead to a critical mass of people who want laws enacted to protect these women and girls,” said Current. “The sense of mission around this piece was unlike anything I’ve ever written before. It made it really easy to get out of bed every morning and bang out the music in a much shorter time than it would usually take.”
Considerable research and collaboration with First Nations communities throughout B.C. went into the score, which incorporates a good deal of traditional melodies and rhythms into its orchestrations. This was an interesting process, even incorporating — with permission — an old traditional wedding song.
“About a third of the opera is in Gitksan and our language consultant, Vince Gogag, would translate Marie’s libretto and then recorded himself speaking the lines,” said Current. “So I took those and spent several wonderful weeks transcribing that language into musical notation. The rhythms, inflections and the melodies flowed from that material and I tried to make it as authentic as possible and, like with the words, stay out of the way.”
Typically, the composer often makes the libretto fit the music. Current said that he approached Clements’ words as something he needed to keep just as they were in the book.
“In this context, it would have been antithetical for a man, a white man, to do what is the typical act of working over the libretto,” he said. “So if I was going to change anything, I would get Marie on the phone to go over it. Unfortunately, this meant that she had to get to know my singing voice, which is also a tragedy.”
It was absolutely paramount that there was a constant back and forth between Clement and the consultants to be sure that all traditional protocols were followed when drawing from First Nations sources. The music of Missing had to be “incorporation, not appropriation.”
“This was a new experience for me, having to hand over the work to the composer and the rest of the team is quite demanding in terms of how final the work needs to be,” said Clements. “But the energy around it and the way it was developed
really gave the story grace.”
Metis Canadian coloratura soprano Melody Courage performs the role of the unnamed First Nations woman and Alberta-born soprano Caitlin Wood sings the role of Ava. Marion Newman, of mixed First Nations and European colonial heritage, plays Indigenous university professor Dr. Wilson.
Coast Salish mezzo-soprano Rose-Ellen Nichols, Moosomin First Nation bass-baritone Clarence Logan, Vancouver mezzosoprano Heather Molloy and Victoria tenor Kaden Fosberg winds out the cast. Peter Hinton, who helmed the Canadian Opera Company’s 2017 work Louis Riel as well as the opening of the 2017 Shaw Festival, will direct.