A new chamber opera
Nobody
Is Ever
Missing
Music by Tim Holt.
Based on the novel by Catherine Lacey.
“No one is anything more than a slow event and I knew I was not a woman but a series of movements, not a life, but a shake.”
Composer's note
I connected deeply with the character of Elyria, and kept her with me when I felt like going missing. The opera turns her traces of thought into sharp gestures — music obsessed with disappearing.
Teaser
Trailer coming soon
Full performance film and rehearsal footage available to presenters — see Media.
Synopsis
Elyria is hitchhiking alone across New Zealand. She has left everything and everyone in her life behind her. As she spends more and more time in her own head, she eventually comes to terms with what it means to escape — and the impossibility of escape from herself.
Selected photography
Full archive →
In the press
Read more press →Baker writes that the score captures the drift of a mind wandering alone with its own thoughts, and that halting string and clarinet writing conveys aimlessness while the vocal line's circular shape mirrors the character's churning interior monologue. Baker called the production's restraint and clarity essential to making such intimate, private emotion land in the theater.
Bring this opera to your stage.
Nobody Is Ever Missing is built for flexible presentation — indoors or out, with live or recorded instrumentalists. Everything a presenter needs is in one place.
Presenter resources