Gossip Reporters - Baroque Style

Julie, Monster can be pretty serious, with a hard-bitten heroine and no less than three doomed romances that end in death. Yet two characters keep popping up to provide comic relief.

These are Missy and Buzzy, intrepid gossip reporters who lurk around the edges of the action, constantly chasing the perfect scoop while providing wry commentary on the desperate doings of the main characters.

Missy is portrayed by musical theater veteran Lindy Pokorny, who is delighted to play a comic role.

Buzzy is played by Kenneth Putnam, a singer and clarinetist and a longtime partner with RVA Baroque.

Like most characters in the opera, Missy and Buzzy are based on historical figures. In this case it’s a pair of aristocrats who exchanged letters to satisfy a huge appetite for gossip. Missy is an avatar of Marie de Sévigné, and Buzzy is a version of her cousin, Roger de Bussy-Rambutin. Over a period of several decades, the two nobles wrote to each other about scandals at court.

In our version, Missy and Buzzy are constantly scrambling to provide fodder for a scandal-addicted public as reporters for the hit show, I Spy Versailles. Naturally, they latch onto Julie d’Aubigny as a never-ending source of what Buzzy calls “the peak freaky.”

Online tickets are available for December 4th and December 11-12th!

Missy and Buzzy might feature you in their next gossip video!