ST. LOUIS – Ricky Ian Gordon's ”This House," with a libretto by Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage and daughter Ruby Aiyo Gerber, will be given its world premiere at the Opera Theater of Saint Louis in June 2025.
The commission was first announced in 2022 and was to have premiered this year. Daniela Candillari will conduct as part of Opera Theater's 50th season. The company said Thursday that Candillari's contract as principal conductor had been extended four more years through the 2028 festival season.
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Candillari, 44, started as the Opera Theater's principal conductor in 2022 and this season led world premieres of Rene Orth's "10 Days in a Madhouse” at Opera Philadelphia and Jeanine Tesori’s “Grounded” at the Washington National Opera.
Candillari will conduct the Opera Theater of St. Louis' company premiere of Handel’s “Julius Caesar" this year starting June 9.
Nottage won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for “Ruined” in 2009 and for “Sweat” in 2017. Her “Intimate Apparel” was adapted by Gordon into an opera that premiered at New York's Lincoln Center Theater in 2022.
Gerber wrote “This House” while attending Brown University, the story of a Harlem brownstone's inhabitants and ghosts through a century.