Opera has long been a space for great artistic collaborations, from the venerable Gilbert and Sullivan to artist David Hockney’s enchanting stage designs. This summer, Opera Theatre of St. Louis will play host to a new collaboration—although it’s one that has been brewing for librettist Ruby Aiyo Gerber’s lifetime.
On May 31, This House—a new opera featuring a libretto by Gerber and her mother, Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Lynn Nottage—will premiere as the second main-stage performance in OTSL’s 50th festival season.
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Created alongside composer Ricky Ian Gordon, This House is the story of the Walkers, their Harlem brownstone, and the century-long family history that dwells there alongside them. Gerber originally penned the story as a student at Brown University.
“I was studying Africana and thinking a lot about how to tell Black history in a site-specific way,” Gerber says. “Growing up in New York in a multigenerational house where my mother grew up, where my grandfather and grandmother lived, I was already thinking about my own family’s story… I was also hearing all of my peers talk about moving to New York, and I shared in that excitement with them, but I also knew that it would come with this wave of displacement. I really was just looking to keep history alive and tell a story about the stakes of preserving Black history.”
Gerber’s story incorporated pieces of her own family lore, including her grandfather growing up in Harlem, and it wasn’t long before she was ready to let Nottage read the work that was so inspired by their shared history. It was her mother who recognized its unique musicality.
“I always wanted it to be a really abstract play that had all of these really rich descriptions,” Gerber says. “And once [Nottage] read them, she was like, ‘This is musical. This is sonic. There are these ways in which you have these literary moments which couldn’t quite be conjured or encapsulated in a stage direction or are lost in simply being stage direction. What if it was put to music?’”
The format fit the home in which they lived. Nottage says the family’s household was full of literal culture clashes among the generations, with jazz on one floor and alternative music on the next. “There was a real awareness of cultural continuity and conversations that I imagine a lot of young people don’t get to have with older people,” she says. “There was this real sense of cultural collisions that were happening always within the house, but there was even within that some unity.”
As they sat down together to create what would become This House, Gerber and Nottage sought to capture the beauty and difficulty of living in a multigenerational household, as well as the stories that change and morph as they’re repeated and remembered. “So rarely do families get to merge their stories, their memories, into one language that can coexist,” Gerber says.
As OTSL attendees get the chance to see This House for the first time, Gerber and Nottage hope it sparks questions about the audience’s own family histories, the spaces they inhabit, and how they want to live together with their pasts and presents every day.
“Something that is really important to the structure and flow of the opera is that time isn’t linear. The past is always present,” Gerber says. “I think that is a really important thing for us all to remember when we’re moving through space—who came first? It’s the mindfulness of always knowing that the past is present. Your family history is present.”
Coming Soon
In addition to This House, the Opera Theatre of St. Louis’ 50th anniversary season includes three other main-stage productions.
Die Fledermaus
May 24–June 28
Billed as the “costume party of the century,” Die Fledermaus kicks off OTSL’s 50th season with Champagne toasts and classic comedy. The Johann Strauss II opera is also the festival’s Pride Night production.
Don Pasquale
June 8–27
Domineering father Don Pasquale learns a valuable lesson courtesy of one of opera’s fiery heroines in this Gaetano Donizetti–penned comedy. This opera buffa includes favorite tropes such as forbidden love, a fake marriage, and a satisfying comeuppance.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
June 14–28
Former St. Louis Symphony Orchestra maestro Leonard Slatkin returns to the orchestra pit to conduct Benjamin Britten’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The magical tale is sure to be a crowd favorite.
