Celestial Excursions

Robert Ashley’s latest opera, Celestial Excursions, is partially set in an “assisted living facility.” At one point during a counseling session, the patients inform us “the only thing that counts is what people don’t understand. If you make it so they can understand it, you are a fool and it’s not going to be any good anyway.” Coming from Ashley, statements like this become metonymical and make perfect sense. As always, the composer manages to travel far beyond the limits of opera—you won’t find any bel canto singing here. Sonically, the overall impact is closer to rap music, with its fountain of motor rhythm text, the opera sets the mind in wander-mode with signposts pointing in every possible direction, all eventually leading to the vast conceptual solar system which Ashley gleefully orbits.

—RN