Part I of A Letter to East 11th Street takes place in 1991. Rick Driscoll, a young man very sick with AIDS, has returned to the suburban house in which he grew up and now videotapes a letter to Susan, his best friend and former roommate in New York. While Rick tapes the letter, Susan watches it on her TV in the apartment they used to share on East 11th Street. Rick sings about his new old life in suburbia, missing his former boyfriend, Tom, and the reasons he chose to leave New York so suddenly. Part II occurs 10 years after Rick has died. Susan, about to leave the apartment she shared with Rick, sings of her life without him and the events of the intervening years. A scratchy recording of an aria sung by a famous soprano, "Al castel natio ritorno..." connects both parts.