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PRESS RELEASE
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OPERA THEATRE OF SAINT LOUIS PREMIERES
THIS HOUSE
A NEW OPERA BY RICKY IAN GORDON, LYNN NOTTAGE,
AND RUBY AIYO GERBER, MAY 31–JUNE 29, 2025
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This House marks Gordon and Nottage’s second opera together,
and Gerber’s debut as a librettist
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This House in a Works & Process presentation at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City on April 6
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NEW YORK (April 23, 2025) ーThis summer, This House, a new opera by Ricky Ian Gordon, Lynn Nottage, and Ruby Aiyo Gerber, receives its world premiere at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis as part of the company’s landmark 50th season. Performances take place at the Loretto-Hilton Center on May 31 and June 5, 11, 13, 21, and 29, conducted by OTSL Principal Conductor Daniela Candillari and directed by James Robinson. The opera is based on a play Gerber wrote as a student at Brown University and marks her first professional collaboration with her mother, Lynn Nottage. It is also the second opera by Nottage and Gordon, following Intimate Apparel, which premiered at Lincoln Center Theater in 2022.
Set in a Harlem brownstone occupied by multiple generations of the Walker family since the 1920s, This House centers on Zoe Walker, who returns home after years away and asks her mother, Ida, and her ailing brother, Lindon, for permission to renovate the dilapidated building. But Ida and Lindon cannot let go of the past. The house is their entire world, with every room full of ghostly voices, painful memories, and hidden truths about the family’s legacy. As those secrets come to light, Zoe begins to realize they are deeper and more profound than she ever imagined.
The cast for This House features soprano Adrienne Danrich as Ida, the matriarch of the Walker family, mezzo-soprano Briana Hunter as her daughter Zoe, and baritone Justin Austin as her son Lindon. Baritone Christian Pursell sings the role of Lindon’s lover Thomas, and tenor Brad Bickhardt sings the role of Zoe’s husband Glenn, while bass Sankara Harouna is Ida’s husband Milton, soprano Aundi Marie Moore is her sister Lucy, and tenor Victor Robinson performs the role of Uncle Percy. Soprano Brandie Inez Sutton portrays Young Ida, and mezzo-soprano Krysty Swann appears as Ida’s mother Beulah.
The libretto, adapted by Nottage and Gerber, draws from their own relationship and shared history. Nottage noted that she and Gerber dealt with themes of intergenerational love and trauma. “A daughter grappling with her legacy, a daughter grappling with her relationship to her mother, a daughter trying to decide if she wants to take this gift that her mother has offered her. Embedded in the themes we’re exploring is our relationship.”
In an April 2023 interview for T: The New York Times Magazine, Gerber reflected on working alongside her two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning mother and expressed deep admiration and respect for her, mixed with a desire to carve out her own voice and path as a writer: “Collaborating with [her] has clarified something for me: that the older I get, the more I’m able to see [her] worth as an artist, and I’m proud of it. But I want to be my own writer — and that’s possible.”
The creative relationship between Gordon and Nottage began when she served on the judging panel that awarded him an OBIE for his song cycle Orpheus and Euridice. Gordon later approached Nottage about adapting her hugely successful play, Intimate Apparel, into an opera. “I never dreamed it would find another form,” said Nottage in a discussion at Columbia University, “until Ricky Ian Gordon, this wonderful composer, approached me, and said, do you want to write an opera?” Intimate Apparel was just weeks into previews in March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly brought the production to a halt. It resumed its run in the winter of 2022 and was a New York Times Critic’s Pick, with critic Jesse Green calling it “A joy to hear!”
Following the premiere of This House, Gordon’s memoir Seeing Through: A Chronicle of Sex, Drugs, and Opera will be released in paperback by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. With humor, clarity, and unflinching honesty, Gordon reflects on his Long Island childhood, creative partnerships, struggles with addiction, and the loss of his partner to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. His deep collaboration and friendship with Lynn Nottage also shaped This House; as stories from Gordon’s own past helped enrich and deepen the characters’ emotional lives.
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THIS HOUSE
Opera Theatre of Saint Louis
Loretto-Hilton Center
130 Edgar Road, St. Louis, MO 63119
Saturday, May 31 at 7:30 p.m.
Thursday, June 5 at 7:30 p.m.
Wednesday, June 11 at 7:30 p.m.
Friday, June 13 at 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, June 21 at 12:30 p.m.
Sunday, June 29 at 7:30 p.m.
Creative Team:
Composer: Ricky Ian Gordon
Libretto: Lynn Nottage and Ruby Aiyo Gerber
Conductor: Daniela Candillari
Stage Director: James Robinson
Set Designer: Allen Moyer
Costume Designer: Montana Levi Blanco
Video Designer: Greg Emetaz
Lighting Designer: Marcus Doshi
Cast:
Zoe: Briana Hunter
Ida: Adrienne Danrich
Lindon: Justin Austin
Thomas: Christian Pursell
Milton: Sankara Harouna
Lucy: Aundi Marie Moore
Uncle Percy/Glenn: Victor Robinson
Glenn: Brad Bickhardt
Young Ida: Brandie Inez Sutton
Beulah: Krysty Swann
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ABOUT RICKY IAN GORDON
Ricky Ian Gordon is a New York-based composer and writer whose works have been regarded as “caviar for a world gorging on pizza” (The New York Times) and have been performed at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and all over the USA and Europe. As a leading writer of vocal music that spans art song, opera, and musical theater. Gordon’s songs have been performed and recorded by such renowned singers as Renée Fleming, Dawn Upshaw, Nathan Gunn, Nicole Cabell, the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, and Frederica Von Stade.
His operas include The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (New York City Opera/Yiddish Folksbiene, lib. Michael Korie); Intimate Apparel (Metropolitan Opera/Lincoln Center Theater, lib. Lynn Nottage); Ellen West (Beth Morrison Projects, Opera Saratoga, lib. Frank Bidart); The House Without a Christmas Tree (Houston Grand Opera), 27 (Opera Theatre of St Louis, lib. Royce Vavrek); Morning Star (Cincinnati Opera, lib. William Hoffman); A Coffin in Egypt (Houston Grand Opera, lib. Leonard Foglia); Rappahannock County (Virginia Opera, lib. Mark Campbell); Green Sneakers (Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival and Lincoln Center, lib. Ricky Ian Gordon); The Grapes of Wrath (Minnesota Opera, lib. Michael Korie); The Tibetan Book of The Dead (Houston Grand Opera, lib. Jean Claude Van Itallie); and Orpheus and Euridice (Lincoln Center, lib. Ricky Ian Gordon, Obie Award). Musicals include Sycamore Trees (Signature Theatre, playwright Nina Mankin, Helen Hayes Award); My Life with Albertine (Playwrights Horizons, playwright Richard Nelson, AT&T Award, Gilman and Gonzalez-Falla Music Theater Foundation Award); and Dream True (Vineyard Theatre, playwright Tina Landau, Richard Rodgers Award).
As a teacher, Gordon has taught both master classes and composition classes in colleges and universities throughout the country, including Yale, NYU, Northwestern, Juilliard, Manhattan School of Music, and more. His honors include an Obie Award, the Stephen Sondheim Award, the 2003 Alumni Merit Award for exceptional achievement and leadership from Carnegie Mellon University, a Shen Family Foundation Award, the Gilman and Gonzalez-Falla Theater Foundation Award, the Constance Klinsky Award, and many awards from ASCAP.
Gordon’s memoir, “Seeing Through: A Chronicle of Sex, Drugs and Opera” has just been published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux and is available as an audiobook as well. “[A] mesmerizing new memoir…As unfiltered as a Pall Mall…I am glad to have so thoroughly enjoyed “Seeing Through” Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times.
For more information about Ricky, visit: rickyiangordon.com
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ABOUT LYNN NOTTAGE
Lynn Nottage is a playwright and a screenwriter, and the first woman in history to win two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. Her recent work includes the libretto for Intimate Apparel the Opera [LCT], the book for MJ The Musical [Broadway] and Clyde’s [Broadway, 2st]. Other work includes The Watering Hole (Signature), Floyd’s (Guthrie) the book for the musical The Secret Life of Bees (Atlantic Theater), Sweat (Pulitzer Prize, Obie Award, Susan Smith Blackburn Award), which moved to Broadway after a sold out run at The Public Theater, Mlima's Tale (Lortel Award Nomination, Outer Critics Circle Nomination), By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (Drama Desk Nomination, Lilly Award), Ruined (Pulitzer Prize, Obie Award, Lortel Award), Intimate Apparel (American Theatre Critics and New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards for Best Play), Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine (Lortel Award Nomination, Drama Desk Nomination, Obie Award), Crumbs from the Table of Joy, Las Meninas, Mud, River, Stone, Por’knockers and POOF!. She has also developed This is Reading, a performance installation at the Franklin Street, Reading Railroad Station in Reading, PA. She was a writer and producer on the first season of Netflix series She's Gotta Have It, directed by Spike Lee.
Nottage is a Professor at Columbia University School of the Arts, and the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius Grant'' Fellowship, Steinberg "Mimi" Distinguished Playwright Award, Doris Duke Artists Award and PEN/Laura Pels Master Playwright Award, among others. She is also a member of the Dramatists Guild.
For more information about Lynn, visit: lynnnottage.com
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ABOUT RUBY AIYO GERBER
Ruby Aiyo Gerber, a graduate of Brown University with a focus on Africana studies, is a versatile artist who is combining her talents as a poet, nonfiction writer, and librettist. Her creative mission explores Black temporality and disrupts traditional storytelling norms, decolonizing language and challenging established narratives to offer fresh perspectives on the Black experience. Ruby Aiyo has received commissions from the Metropolitan Opera/Lincoln Center Theater and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and participated in Carrie Mae Weems's Varying Shades of Brown convening. She completed a residency at OperaFusion with Cincinnati Opera.
Ruby Aiyo’s upcoming works include This House, an opera by Lynn Nottage, Ruby Aiyo Gerber, and Ricky Ian Gordon, premiering at the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in May 2024, and In the Rush, with a workshop at Indiana University in January 2025 and a production planned at the Metropolitan Opera in 2027. Ruby is currently pursuing her MFA in writing at Bard College.
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ABOUT OPERA THEATRE OF SAINT LOUIS
Opera Theatre of Saint Louis is a spring festival featuring casts of rising opera singers accompanied by the acclaimed St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. Each season, OTSL presents four compelling new productions in English during the months of May and June. In addition to staging innovative interpretations of classics, OTSL is also committed to premiering new and reviving relevant operas by prominent composers; by the company's 50th season, Opera Theatre will have staged 45 world premieres. The company’s competitive young artist programs foster the next generation of emerging singers; these programs have been a springboard for countless artists to launch international careers. Beyond its Festival Season, Opera Theatre provides year-round programming and educational initiatives that reach over 80,000 people in St. Louis and beyond annually. OTSL is led by General Director Andrew Jorgensen, in collaboration with Artistic Director of Young Artist Programs Patricia Racette, and Principal Conductor Daniela Candillari.
Opera Theatre of Saint Louis is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Missouri Arts Council, Regional Arts Commission, and the City of St. Louis Mental Health Board. Opera Theatre gratefully acknowledges Webster University for its sustaining partnership.
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