The Vancouver Foundation has awarded City Opera Vancouver a $127,000 grant to create a new chamber opera that tackles the story of Canada's missing Aboriginal women.
In a press release, the Pauline creators linked this new work to the findings of the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation report, which highlighted the role of the arts in "breaking silences, transforming conflicts, and mending the damaged relationships of violence, oppression, and exclusion."
"This extraordinary grant will allow City Opera to research, commission and create, test and workshop, our new opera,” said City Opera Vancouver president Janet Lea in the release. "This new chamber opera will tell a story everyone knows, from the vantage of a woman no one remembers. And it follows on the very great success of Pauline, by Margaret Atwood and Tobin Stokes, in May 2014,” Lea added.
Missing Women, written by librettist and First Nations playwright Marie Clements, will be set in Vancouver and along the Highway of Tears.
“Marie brings a unique combination of great artistry, poetic imagination, command of theatre, and fundamental knowledge of the core issues we are confronting,” said Lea. “She is also a wonderful colleague and partner.”
Selection is still underway for a dramaturge and stage director, meanwhile the composer is slated to be chosen by jury in April of next year.
The three-year grant will lead to preliminary performances in November 2017, and the chamber opera – an opera written to be performed with a chamber ensemble rather than a full orchestra – is intended to be toured throughout BC and back East.
