Intergenerational Opera That Is Also a Family Affair
During the Covid pandemic, homes became central characters in our lives. For composer Ricky Ian Gordon and librettists Lynn Nottage and Ruby Aiyo Gerber, that experience inspired This House, a new opera premiering at the Opera Theater of St. Louis and running through June 29.
This marks a reunion for Gordon and Nottage, who previously collaborated on the chamber opera Intimate Apparel, a Metropolitan Opera commission staged in 2022 after pandemic delays. The two discovered a strong creative synergy, with Nottage remarking that, unlike other collaborations where visions clashed, she and Gordon shared a common creative language.
That collaboration deepened with the addition of Gerber, Nottage’s daughter and a multimedia artist. The family dynamic proved fitting for This House, which centers on three generations of the Walker family in Harlem, exploring their personal and collective struggles.
Musically, Gordon evokes American styles ranging from ragtime to midcentury ballads, without resorting to mimicry. “I’m just a trash can of American music,” he joked, to which Nottage replied, “Call it composting — you’re creating fertilizer for the next generation.”
Despite Gordon’s playful musical approach, the libretto remains the foundation. “I call it ‘music for the theater,’” he said. “I want it to feel like I’ve taken their words and set them like a jewel in a ring.”
This House traces the Walkers’ journey in a Sugar Hill brownstone from the 1920s to the present. Patriarch Minus Walker, a former sharecropper, purchased the home. His daughters came of age during the civil rights era, while his grandchildren, Lindon and Zoe, represent modern tensions — particularly as Zoe’s husband seeks to renovate and divide the house.
Characters drift in and out of time, with ancestors reappearing as ghosts. Gordon’s lush score supports this intergenerational tapestry, intensifying the family’s claustrophobic closeness. The spirits remain onstage throughout the opera, underscoring the inescapable weight of legacy.
Gordon also gives the house itself a musical voice. Rejecting traditional sound effects, he wrote a reed motif that breathes when the house does, expressing its spiritual and emotional essence. “The house — which is the ghosts — sings this vocalise,” he explained.
The seed of the opera came from Gerber, who first wrote This House as a play during the pandemic. Inspired by the brownstone where both she and her mother grew up, Gerber explored themes of home, memory, and the peculiar loneliness of lockdown life.
When Nottage and Gordon discussed reuniting, Nottage suggested her daughter’s story, and the expanded collaboration was born. Nottage noted that setting the opera in a home fostered intimacy between creators and audience, inviting viewers to “lean in and put together the puzzle pieces.”
For Gerber, the opera also reflects a deeper commentary on displacement, especially in Black communities. “Jobs pause, other things pause, but evictions don’t,” she said, pointing to the disproportionate impact of pandemic housing insecurity.
Premiering in St. Louis — a city grappling with racial and economic divides — This House resonates with themes of gentrification and generational loss. Gerber reflected, “Even when the humans aren’t there, the house still is.” The opera becomes an act of re-rooting Black ancestral presence in a country where such histories are too often ghost stories.
