It’s Not Really About Judy

In this new opera, Stromboli and his librettist Grunz have concocted a post-modern fiasco, unwatchable and unlistenable, while delivering a much-needed dose of lightheadedness.

The unlikely plot of Whither Aunt Judy? centers on the soprano and the tenor, who strike up a relationship propagated entirely by email, clearly doomed from the opening bars. Tinged by unfortunate chance interactions that occurred months in the past, these characters maintain the familiar (but, for the audience, discomfiting) “curious but distant” stance well into the third act.

Send and Reply; Repeat Daily

The male lead is delighted by the lively and friendly tone of the email messages he receives at the start; he perceives a unique vigor and audacity in these missives. A glimmer of hope shines in his murky world. Yet he’s the product of a normal male upbringing, and therefore questions his feelings and moves ahead with annoying tentativeness. Intermission soon?, we ask.

The soprano keyboards along with superior confidence, a soul haunted by a dark and sordid past, the details withheld, merely hinted at, in cunning arias and puzzling recitativo. Still, her strident upper registers manifest the ideals of pure chiave regolabile, enchanting to the ear.

Starstruck, the tenor delivers the now-famous Act 2 aria “Questo è più che interessante”, which brought the house down at Glyndebourne -- and rightly so -- losing only a bit of its piquancy in the medium of email.  The soprano responds touchingly with her heart-rending solo, “Who is Dustin Hoffman?”, vibrato aflutter. Ticket-holders as distant as the fifth balcony will be seen in tears.

Insufficient Bandwidth

Musicologists note that Stromboli and Grunz considered a wild variety of endings for Judy, most of them centered on muffins, scones, and the like, as both were known to have a near-pathological affinity for quickbread snacks. (Shortly after composition was completed in Milan, Grunz is said to have revealed a preference for salt bagels; this infuriated his writing partner, and the break was permanent.)

What they finally offer up is absurd in the extreme, and reflects nothing short of an aberrant take on modern communication methods, personal technology, and humanity (with a capital “H”). By the close of Act 3, what emerges is the proposition that typing out emails is indeed endearing, enjoyable, and suggestive of delicious opportunity, but it is not the same as knowing, in substance, the person on your “To:” line. Alas.

Act 4 is poetically titled “Bifurcation”, and here Stromboli hammers home his weird conviction. While the male chorus is marshalled to urge the tenor to “simply go for it”, our hero types feverishly in Outlook, but without the strength that would come from truly understanding his correspondent. There is nothing there to “go for” except font choices and word counts and workmanlike turns of phrase. 

Similarly, the soprano (preferring gmail.com) finds the interchange appealing, even gracious and fresh, yet when her heavenly band of mezzos and lyric sopranos ask how she feels about all this, she has no clear response.  Per the French tradition, a gaudy ballet scene communicates the notion that emailing has been eye-popping, but who the hell (again, French) is this tenor guy in real life?

A Traditional Lento Dolorosamente

An unexpected additional intermission delays the reveal, and those in line for booze on the second level could be heard grumbling about indecisiveness and wheel-spinning. “After all this”, hissed one season-ticket dowager, clad only in ratty slippers, “this email yarn had better come through with some fancy attachments and embedded links, because nobody in box 8C will stand for a power outage and a blue screen. We’re talking refunds.”

Comely young ushers inconspicuously weave through the irritated crowd, suggesting that the holdup has to do with “spirit characters” who will appear in the final act.  This clumsy reference to Magic Flute does nothing to calm the impatient crowd.

Elderly yammerers ejected forcefully onto the street, anticipation is high as the curtain rises once again on the final scene, and wow, is it a doozie!

Back to Black

An obscuring mist fills the stage, floor to fly rigging, and it is here that the objectionable “spirits” make their appearance, center stage and looming large. Who and what these “spirits” are is left unclarified.

Both tenor and soprano appear, far apart at opposite sides, each holding a smartphone aloft.

Fully separated by the nameless ghosts, they sing their first duet of the evening, addressing the audience with convincing stridency:

“This is fine, we are fine, our friendship is just as you see it, no more and no less. You are attending neither a romance nor a tragedy, but something in between, let’s just call it interesting and normal real life.”

“I can write stories,” says the tenor from his side, “and probably better ones than this.”

“I can sing,” says the soprano, opposite, “and I’m not afraid of that, obviously.” She smiles contentedly and adds a bluesy cadenza of her own composition, to ample applause.

As the curtain begins to fall, the tenor appears to try to send yet another email, but then gestures in frustration at the imposing blockade of the “spirits” center stage, and gives up. He shrugs and, in a motion visible from center orchestra and Family Circle and the far corners of High Balcony 4, switches off his “send” function, to save batteries. (The libretto with this bizarre stage instruction has been under study in Turin for months, but there is little hope for a valid critical interpretation.)

The lights are cut, as the orchestra takes us out with a happy Rossinian finale.

Step bravely ahead, operagoers, duly warned.  Electronic communication has never been so formidably portrayed.

On through September at the recently-abandoned Art Makers Outpost, Schenectady.