The "dazzling" and "spellbinding" This House has its world premiere at OTSL
- ebrown9879
- Jun 6
- 2 min read
Adrienne Danrich as Ida (far left) and Krysty Swann as Beulah (background center) in This House. | Photo by Eric Woolsey
Renowned composer Ricky Ian Gordon's latest collaboration with Lynn Nottage opened last Saturday at Opera Theater of Saint Louis. Following their acclaimed partnership on Intimate Apparel in 2020, they reunited for a commission for Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. This time Lynn's daughter, Ruby Aiyo Gerber, joined the ranks as co-librettist. Check out some of the great notices This House received below. (This House was also assistant conducted by OTSL's Head of Music, Darwin Aquino.)
Ricky Ian Gordon’s lush score brings to vivid life a libretto by Lynn Nottage and her daughter Ruby Aiyo Gerber, weaving impacts of the Civil War, Great Migration, Black Power movement, AIDS crisis and gentrification.
Krysty Swann as Beulah (left) and Victor Ryan Robertson as Percy (standing on chair) | Photo by Eric Woolsey
This House is a triumph at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. The company’s 45th world premiere is a masterpiece. It has a dazzling score by Ricky Ian Gordon and a spellbinding libretto by Lynn Nottage and Ruby Aiyo Gerber, Nottage’s daughter...
Gordon’s wondrously flexible, completely accessible music shows influences of many genres. In the program, Gordon mentions, “jazz, ragtime, serialism, American popular song, stride piano, hard rock…you name it.”
The OTSL cast is superb. Its members sing brilliantly and act with total commitment and credibility. The performers and their roles are:
Adrienne Danrich as Ida...
Krysty Swann as Beulah, Ida’s mother
Victor Ryan Robertson as Ida’s Uncle Percy
Clockwise from top: Lynn Nottage, Ricky Ian Gordon, and Ruby Aiyo Gerber on the set of This House | Photo: Whitney Curtis
The New York Times also recently profiled the creative team of This House, ahead of the premiere:
...The characters dart in and out of the opera’s narrative. Successive generations are haunted and cradled by preceding ones, with whom they commune, the elders frequently appearing as ghosts. The generations crisscross, too, in Gordon’s lush, evocative score.
Gordon said that the musical inter-weavings enhance the sense of an intergenerational attachment — a sometimes claustrophobia-inducing closeness. “In ‘Intimate Apparel,’” he said, “I used the whole ensemble as an orchestra, so they barely ever left the stage. I decided to further that here. The ghosts, the spirits, never leave the stage. I want them there. It creates a sense of witness.”
Gordon also chose to personify the house musically. “In the libretto,” he said, “the house itself breathes three times. I made a decision right from the beginning that I did not want this to be a sound-effect opera.” Instead, he created a motif for the orchestra’s reed section: “Whenever the house breathes, the reeds blow into their instruments, and the house — which is the ghosts — sing this vocalise.”
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