Latest news with #OperaTheatre
Hamilton Spectator
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
`This House' makes world premiere, exploring Black history through a family's legacy in Harlem
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Near the end of 'This House,' a heart-wrenching opera given its world premiere last weekend, the matriarch Ida poignantly intones messages to her family on stage and to the audience. 'History's the only thing to survive,' soprano Adrienne Danrich sings before adding: 'You may have left us, but we will never leave you.' A rumination on love, aspiration, coping and the unyielding weight of the past, the roughly two-hour work that opened Saturday night at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis mixes the living and ghosts ambiguously in a Harlem brownstone. 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. There are five more performances through June 29. 'I just wanted to be able to tell all of these really important moments in Black history,' Gerber said, 'but as they relate to one family up into the current moment, so that there is not this erasure as if the past was the past, which I think increasingly now, especially as we see more and more censorship of Black history, is kind of this pervasive narrative.' Writing began when Gerber was a college senior Now 27, Gerber started 'This House' as a play in 2020 during her senior year at Brown while the coronavirus pandemic unfolded. Her mother, the only woman to win a pair of Pulitzer Prizes for drama, for 'Ruined' and 'Sweat, ' suggested Gerber adapt it with her into an opera composed by Gordon, Nottage's partner on 'Intimate Apparel' at Lincoln Center Theater. Opera Theater of St. Louis commissioned 'This House' for its 50th anniversary festival season as its 45th world premiere. 'Equal parts a family drama, a ghost story and a meditation on inheritance and memory,' company general director Andrew Jorgensen said. Ideas were exchanged when Gordon, Nottage and Gerber met at a Providence, Rhode Island, hotel. Among the changes, an escapist duet the librettists centered around Barcelona was changed to Valencia so as not to be similar to Stephen Sondheim's 'Company.' 'Being a mother-daughter you can be so honest,' Gerber said, recalling her mom telling her of one flowery passage: 'That's corny and I don't think it works.' Nottage still lives in the Brooklyn parlor house where Gerber grew up. 'We have different muscles. I'm someone that comes from the playwriting world,' Nottage said. 'Ruby's comfort zone is really poetry and language. and so I thought that between the two of us, we could divide and conquer in some ways.' Opera is set in Harlem brownstone In the resulting story, a house at 336 Convent Ave. was bought in 1919 by Minus Walker, a sharecropper's son. Zoe, a present-day investment banker (soprano Briana Hunter), and husband Glenn (tenor Brad Bickhardt) mull whether to move back to the house and subdivide the property. Zoe's brother, poetic painter Lindon (baritone Justin Austin), doesn't want to leave the house. and his lover Thomas (bass-baritone Christian Pursell) suggests they travel to Spain. Hunter tapped into anxiety, fear, pain and grief to portray Zoe. 'She's an ambitious woman, and she has been through a lot of really horrible, traumatic events through her family,' Hunter said. 'I understand the desire to kind of escape that. She's kind of a classic case of you can't avoid things forever.' Eight of the 10 characters are Black. There's a love triangle, pregnancies and surprise deaths. The house itself sings in 12-tone chords. Ida's Uncle Percy (tenor Victor Ryan Robertson) is a numbers runner who jolts the first act with an aria 'Drink Up!' 'Sportin' Life on steroids,' Gordon said, referring to the dope dealer in 'The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess.' 'We all are haunted by our past, and we all are haunted by our ghosts,' Gordon said. 'The question of living one's life is how does one reconcile the past and go on? How do you move into a future unbridled and free enough to be liberated and not imprisoned by the past?' Conductor has a penchant for contemporary works Daniela Candillari led her third world premiere in less than two years after Jeanine Tesori's 'Grounded' at the Washington National Opera and Rene Orth's '10 Days in a Madhouse' at Opera Philadelphia. Gordon originally envisioned the orchestra as chamber sized to hold down expenses, but Candillari pushed to add instruments. Conducting this is different from leading Verdi or Puccini. 'You can have two conductors read the score in a very different way,' she said. 'Having that direct source. a living composer who can tell you: This is what I heard and this is how I meant it and this is what this needs to be, that's incredibly invaluable.' Forty-eight players from the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra were in the deep pit at the Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts, a venue with a thrust stage and difficult acoustics. James Robinson, the company's former artistic director, returned to direct the performances and is likely to bring the staging to Seattle Opera, where he became general and artistic director in September 2024. 'It is kind of a ghost story, and I think that's the most important thing, knowing that we're able to bounce back and forth between time periods efficiently,' he said. For Danrich, portraying Ida has a special resonance. She is a St. Louis native and is staying at a hotel three blocks from where she grew up. 'My cousins, my grandmother, my grandfather, me, my sisters, we all lived in that big old house and we called it the big house,' she said. 'I was like, yep, this is my house. I'm actually basing her movements and her mannerisms off of my mother.'
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
`This House' makes world premiere, exploring Black history through a family's legacy in Harlem
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Near the end of 'This House,' a heart-wrenching opera given its world premiere last weekend, the matriarch Ida poignantly intones messages to her family on stage and to the audience. 'History's the only thing to survive,' soprano Adrienne Danrich sings before adding: 'You may have left us, but we will never leave you.' A rumination on love, aspiration, coping and the unyielding weight of the past, the roughly two-hour work that opened Saturday night at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis mixes the living and ghosts ambiguously in a Harlem brownstone. 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. There are five more performances through June 29. 'I just wanted to be able to tell all of these really important moments in Black history,' Gerber said, 'but as they relate to one family up into the current moment, so that there is not this erasure as if the past was the past, which I think increasingly now, especially as we see more and more censorship of Black history, is kind of this pervasive narrative.' Writing began when Gerber was a college senior Now 27, Gerber started 'This House' as a play in 2020 during her senior year at Brown while the coronavirus pandemic unfolded. Her mother, the only woman to win a pair of Pulitzer Prizes for drama, for 'Ruined' and 'Sweat, ' suggested Gerber adapt it with her into an opera composed by Gordon, Nottage's partner on 'Intimate Apparel' at Lincoln Center Theater. Opera Theater of St. Louis commissioned 'This House' for its 50th anniversary festival season as its 45th world premiere. 'Equal parts a family drama, a ghost story and a meditation on inheritance and memory,' company general director Andrew Jorgensen said. Ideas were exchanged when Gordon, Nottage and Gerber met at a Providence, Rhode Island, hotel. Among the changes, an escapist duet the librettists centered around Barcelona was changed to Valencia so as not to be similar to Stephen Sondheim's 'Company.' 'Being a mother-daughter you can be so honest,' Gerber said, recalling her mom telling her of one flowery passage: 'That's corny and I don't think it works.' Nottage still lives in the Brooklyn parlor house where Gerber grew up. 'We have different muscles. I'm someone that comes from the playwriting world,' Nottage said. 'Ruby's comfort zone is really poetry and language. and so I thought that between the two of us, we could divide and conquer in some ways.' Opera is set in Harlem brownstone In the resulting story, a house at 336 Convent Ave. was bought in 1919 by Minus Walker, a sharecropper's son. Zoe, a present-day investment banker (soprano Briana Hunter), and husband Glenn (tenor Brad Bickhardt) mull whether to move back to the house and subdivide the property. Zoe's brother, poetic painter Lindon (baritone Justin Austin), doesn't want to leave the house. and his lover Thomas (bass-baritone Christian Pursell) suggests they travel to Spain. Hunter tapped into anxiety, fear, pain and grief to portray Zoe. 'She's an ambitious woman, and she has been through a lot of really horrible, traumatic events through her family,' Hunter said. 'I understand the desire to kind of escape that. She's kind of a classic case of you can't avoid things forever.' Eight of the 10 characters are Black. There's a love triangle, pregnancies and surprise deaths. The house itself sings in 12-tone chords. Ida's Uncle Percy (tenor Victor Ryan Robertson) is a numbers runner who jolts the first act with an aria 'Drink Up!' 'Sportin' Life on steroids,' Gordon said, referring to the dope dealer in 'The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess.' 'We all are haunted by our past, and we all are haunted by our ghosts,' Gordon said. 'The question of living one's life is how does one reconcile the past and go on? How do you move into a future unbridled and free enough to be liberated and not imprisoned by the past?' Conductor has a penchant for contemporary works Daniela Candillari led her third world premiere in less than two years after Jeanine Tesori's 'Grounded' at the Washington National Opera and Rene Orth's '10 Days in a Madhouse' at Opera Philadelphia. Gordon originally envisioned the orchestra as chamber sized to hold down expenses, but Candillari pushed to add instruments. Conducting this is different from leading Verdi or Puccini. 'You can have two conductors read the score in a very different way,' she said. 'Having that direct source. a living composer who can tell you: This is what I heard and this is how I meant it and this is what this needs to be, that's incredibly invaluable.' Forty-eight players from the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra were in the deep pit at the Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts, a venue with a thrust stage and difficult acoustics. James Robinson, the company's former artistic director, returned to direct the performances and is likely to bring the staging to Seattle Opera, where he became general and artistic director in September 2024. 'It is kind of a ghost story, and I think that's the most important thing, knowing that we're able to bounce back and forth between time periods efficiently,' he said. For Danrich, portraying Ida has a special resonance. She is a St. Louis native and is staying at a hotel three blocks from where she grew up. 'My cousins, my grandmother, my grandfather, me, my sisters, we all lived in that big old house and we called it the big house,' she said. 'I was like, yep, this is my house. I'm actually basing her movements and her mannerisms off of my mother.'
Winnipeg Free Press
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
`This House' makes world premiere, exploring Black history through a family's legacy in Harlem
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Near the end of 'This House,' a heart-wrenching opera given its world premiere last weekend, the matriarch Ida poignantly intones messages to her family on stage and to the audience. 'History's the only thing to survive,' soprano Adrienne Danrich sings before adding: 'You may have left us, but we will never leave you.' A rumination on love, aspiration, coping and the unyielding weight of the past, the roughly two-hour work that opened Saturday night at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis mixes the living and ghosts ambiguously in a Harlem brownstone. 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. There are five more performances through June 29. 'I just wanted to be able to tell all of these really important moments in Black history,' Gerber said, 'but as they relate to one family up into the current moment, so that there is not this erasure as if the past was the past, which I think increasingly now, especially as we see more and more censorship of Black history, is kind of this pervasive narrative.' Writing began when Gerber was a college senior Now 27, Gerber started 'This House' as a play in 2020 during her senior year at Brown while the coronavirus pandemic unfolded. Her mother, the only woman to win a pair of Pulitzer Prizes for drama, for 'Ruined' and 'Sweat, ' suggested Gerber adapt it with her into an opera composed by Gordon, Nottage's partner on 'Intimate Apparel' at Lincoln Center Theater. Opera Theater of St. Louis commissioned 'This House' for its 50th anniversary festival season as its 45th world premiere. 'Equal parts a family drama, a ghost story and a meditation on inheritance and memory,' company general director Andrew Jorgensen said. Ideas were exchanged when Gordon, Nottage and Gerber met at a Providence, Rhode Island, hotel. Among the changes, an escapist duet the librettists centered around Barcelona was changed to Valencia so as not to be similar to Stephen Sondheim's 'Company.' 'Being a mother-daughter you can be so honest,' Gerber said, recalling her mom telling her of one flowery passage: 'That's corny and I don't think it works.' Nottage still lives in the Brooklyn parlor house where Gerber grew up. 'We have different muscles. I'm someone that comes from the playwriting world,' Nottage said. 'Ruby's comfort zone is really poetry and language. and so I thought that between the two of us, we could divide and conquer in some ways.' Opera is set in Harlem brownstone In the resulting story, a house at 336 Convent Ave. was bought in 1919 by Minus Walker, a sharecropper's son. Zoe, a present-day investment banker (soprano Briana Hunter), and husband Glenn (tenor Brad Bickhardt) mull whether to move back to the house and subdivide the property. Zoe's brother, poetic painter Lindon (baritone Justin Austin), doesn't want to leave the house. and his lover Thomas (bass-baritone Christian Pursell) suggests they travel to Spain. Hunter tapped into anxiety, fear, pain and grief to portray Zoe. 'She's an ambitious woman, and she has been through a lot of really horrible, traumatic events through her family,' Hunter said. 'I understand the desire to kind of escape that. She's kind of a classic case of you can't avoid things forever.' Eight of the 10 characters are Black. There's a love triangle, pregnancies and surprise deaths. The house itself sings in 12-tone chords. Ida's Uncle Percy (tenor Victor Ryan Robertson) is a numbers runner who jolts the first act with an aria 'Drink Up!' 'Sportin' Life on steroids,' Gordon said, referring to the dope dealer in 'The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess.' 'We all are haunted by our past, and we all are haunted by our ghosts,' Gordon said. 'The question of living one's life is how does one reconcile the past and go on? How do you move into a future unbridled and free enough to be liberated and not imprisoned by the past?' Conductor has a penchant for contemporary works Daniela Candillari led her third world premiere in less than two years after Jeanine Tesori's 'Grounded' at the Washington National Opera and Rene Orth's '10 Days in a Madhouse' at Opera Philadelphia. Gordon originally envisioned the orchestra as chamber sized to hold down expenses, but Candillari pushed to add instruments. Conducting this is different from leading Verdi or Puccini. 'You can have two conductors read the score in a very different way,' she said. 'Having that direct source. a living composer who can tell you: This is what I heard and this is how I meant it and this is what this needs to be, that's incredibly invaluable.' Forty-eight players from the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra were in the deep pit at the Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts, a venue with a thrust stage and difficult acoustics. James Robinson, the company's former artistic director, returned to direct the performances and is likely to bring the staging to Seattle Opera, where he became general and artistic director in September 2024. 'It is kind of a ghost story, and I think that's the most important thing, knowing that we're able to bounce back and forth between time periods efficiently,' he said. For Danrich, portraying Ida has a special resonance. She is a St. Louis native and is staying at a hotel three blocks from where she grew up. 'My cousins, my grandmother, my grandfather, me, my sisters, we all lived in that big old house and we called it the big house,' she said. 'I was like, yep, this is my house. I'm actually basing her movements and her mannerisms off of my mother.'
San Francisco Chronicle
01-06-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
‘Harvey Milk Reimagined': What works and what doesn't in revised Opera Parallèle production
'Harvey Milk' is back. No, not the legendary civil rights activist, who was assassinated after becoming the first openly gay elected official in California history, but ' Harvey Milk Reimagined,' a heavily revised version of composer Stewart Wallace and librettist Michael Korie's 1995 opera. San Francisco Opera co-commissioned the original, performed here in 1996. Now, three decades later, Opera Parallèle — the local company that has made a mission of staging works by contemporary composers — is presenting the West Coast premiere of 'Harvey Milk Reimagined,' as part of a co-commission with Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. This production, which had its opening performance at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts' Blue Shield of California Theater on Saturday, May 31, comes at a timely moment, when the civil rights of transgender and other LGBTQ people are being challenged in the United States — a contrast to the hope that infuses Milk's story. The message of the opera is ultimately uplifting, even if the telling is at times harried. Korie has trimmed the libretto, which covers Milk's life from his childhood to his assassination by fellow San Francisco supervisor Dan White, While he removed a swath of secondary characters and a good amount of repetitive text, the libretto manages to retain many interactions and scenes. Still, the result feels too compressed and overstuffed, crammed with so much incident in its two hours that Milk himself, here portrayed by the sweet-voiced baritone Michael Kelly, feels out of focus. There's a lot of throat-clearing and scene-setting before his character is settled in San Francisco and running for office. Wallace's highly eclectic and fast-moving score contributes to the sense of trying to do too much. The revised opera starts with Harvey's Mama, tenderly sung by mezzo-soprano Catherine Cook, lecturing her young son (a star turn by tenor Curtis Resnick) about the Holocaust and being Jewish over a choral setting of the Mourner's Kaddish. Themes of identity overlap right from the beginning, as do musical styles. Mama also warns about 'men who are different' and reminds her son to come home right after the opera he's attending. From there, the score is constantly on the go, full of jagged rhythms and awkward text-setting. Sometimes this works — the scene with young Harvey at the opera, wondering who 'Tessa Tura' might be, is hilarious and evocative — but more often it feels rushed. Moreover, Ben Krames' sound design was far too loud, with each of the principal singers overamplified, blunting their portrayals and covering much musical detail in the 30-piece orchestra. (In a theater seating only 800, with a small orchestra, why amplify at all?) 'Harvey Milk Reimagined' is at its best when it takes its time: in the scene introducing Milk's lover Scott Smith, flamboyantly portrayed by tenor Henry Benson; in a loving late-night duet between Smith and Milk; and especially in the beautiful closing scene after Milk is murdered. The revision casts the role of the Messenger as a countertenor rather than a baritone, and Matheus Coura's supernaturally beautiful voice and striking presence in the part brought real magic to the close. Soprano Chea Kang as supervisor Henrietta Wong contributed a gorgeous solo there as well. Act 2 is more focused and covers Milk's emergence on the San Francisco political scene. Here his interactions with Mayor George Moscone, who was also murdered by White, and then-supervisor Dianne Feinstein provide insight into Milk's character and strategic abilities. Bass Matt Boehler and soprano Marnie Breckenridge, respectively, eloquently brought these politicians to life, with Breckenridge's additional brief turn as a Castro prostitute vividly jumping out of the mass of secondary characters. Tenor Christopher Oglesby's chilling depiction of White went from aggrieved and homophobic to truly mad over the course of the opera. Some choices made by the production team dull the work's effectiveness. The opera starts in New York City, where Milk grew up and lived for most of his life, and concludes in San Francisco, but the stage design — consisting of sets of stairs that are deployed in various formations and numerous hanging doors — lacks any sense of place. The projected photos of both cities don't quite do enough, leaving Castro Street feeling indistinguishable from Wall Street. The doors unsubtly symbolize the closet, where you'd find most LGBTQ people in the 1970s. The sets shift constantly around the stage and limit what director Brian Staufenbiel can do with his cast, particularly in the frequent crowd scenes. On top of all this, the costuming and styling of several characters seem slightly off, especially noticeable against the real-life photos and film the production uses. On Saturday, Nicole Paiement conducted with her customary sharpness and drive, though perhaps, in this case, less drive and more repose would have been to the opera's benefit.
Malay Mail
31-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Malay Mail
Under bombs, above fear: Kharkiv's ballet reclaims the stage amid war's shadows
KHARKIV (Ukraine), May 31 — In the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, it's hard to escape the war with Russia. On some days, when the wind blows in the right direction, residents of the historic city can hear the boom of artillery fire from the front line, some 30 km (20 miles) away. Most nights, Russian kamikaze drones packed with explosives buzz over apartment buildings as parents put their children to bed. Frequently - but unpredictably - a Russian ballistic missile will slam into the city. Three years on from Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, for many people in Kharkiv, the war with its unrelenting, inescapable proximity, takes a mental toll. But there is a space in the city where – for a few fleeting hours – the war stops existing. In the dark, brick-walled basement of the Kharkiv National Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre, a dance company has created a space protected from drones and bombs where audiences can lose themselves in performances of classic ballets. In April, the space was host to performances of 'Chopiniana', an early 20th-century ballet with music by Frederic Chopin. Despite the makeshift setting, the ballet was performed with full classical pomp, complete with corps de ballet and orchestra. That marked a milestone for Kharkiv's cultural life because it was the first full performance of a classical ballet in the city since February 2022, when Russian troops invaded Ukraine. 'In spite of everything – the fact that bombs are flying, drones, and everything else – we can give a gift of something wonderful to people,' said Antonina Radiievska, artistic director of Opera East, the ballet company which staged the performance. 'They can come and, even if it's just for an hour or two, completely immerse themselves in a different world.' Despite Ukraine's history of excellence in classical ballet, the art form seems far removed from the everyday lives of Ukrainians in wartime. Daily routines are given over to checking apps for drone attack warnings, sleeping on the metro station floor to escape an air raid or seeking news of relatives on the front line. Pirouettes, pas-de-deux and chiffon tutus feel a world away. Ballerina Antonina Radiievska, 43, poses for a picture after practising for the revival of 'Chopiniana,' the first since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in the underground area of the National Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, April 27, 2025. — Reuters pic New normal Nevertheless, the journey of Kharkiv's ballet through the war mirrors the ways Ukrainian society has adapted and evolved. On February 23, 2022, the National Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre put on a performance of the ballet 'Giselle'. The following day, Russia launched its full-scale invasion. As Moscow's troops reached the outskirts of Kharkiv and threatened to capture the city, the theatre closed its doors and many of the ballet troupe moved away. Some of them reassembled in Slovakia and Lithuania, and began touring ballet productions outside Ukraine with help from European sponsors. By 2023, the war was grinding on, but the situation in Kharkiv, in Ukraine's northeast, had stabilised after Russian ground forces pulled back. The realisation dawned on the city that this was a long game, a new, wartime reality. Local people started referring to the city – and themselves – using the Ukrainian word 'nezlamniy', meaning invincible. It was that year that work began on converting the theatre basement into a performance space. In October 2023, it began to be used as a rehearsal space. In spring the following year, the theatre was granted permission to bring in an audience, and it held small-scale ballet performances such as children's concerts. The revival of 'Chopiniana' represents the next milestone in Kharkiv's wartime cultural journey. Staging a classical opera again sends a message that Ukraine is still standing, according to Igor Tuluzov, Director-General of Opera East, the company staging the production. 'We are demonstrating to the world that we really are a self-sufficient state, independent, in all its aspects, including cultural independence,' he said. The auditorium seats 400 people on stackable chairs, compared to 1,750 in the main theatre upstairs, where the plush mustard seats lie empty. The stage downstairs is one quarter the size of the main stage. The aesthetic is grey-painted brick, concrete floors, pipes and electricity ducting running along the walls – a contrast to the varnished hardwood and marble of the space upstairs. The acoustic qualities of the basement, say the performers, don't match the lofty expanses of the main theatre. What matters to artistic director Radiievska, though, is that after a long hiatus, she and her troupe can once again perform at their best, in front of an audience. 'It means, you know, life,' she said. 'An artist cannot exist without the stage, without creativity, without dance or song. It's like a rebirth.' — Reuters
