Celestial Excursions

Robert Ashley's new opera, Celestial Excursions, is electronically innovative, socially provocative and incorrigibly musical-theatrical. It focuses on homeless people – whom he calls ‘old people’ – and their way of speaking, of communicating without communicating. ‘I am interested in the totality of their speech – or, to be more precise, the totality of their thoughts, not really the sounds. I am fascinated by the many stories (monologues) that are all told at the same time.’ The sung stories of the ‘old people’ chase each other in a highly sophisticated vocal technique that has matured over many years and which Ashley has never before applied with such consistency. The special style of speech clothes the word arabesques in a recitative shell that sometimes seems polished. ‘The result of this technique is a layering in unison or harmony of the voices, whereby each of them strangely retains its own character, so that the listener can follow them through the sequence of their entries, their story, so to speak.’