Latest news with #Gerber
Hamilton Spectator
4 hours ago
- 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
9 hours ago
- 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
9 hours ago
- 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.'
CNET
6 days ago
- General
- CNET
My Favorite Do-It-All Multitool Is Perfect for Around the House or an Emergency Bag
I have always liked DIY-ing my way around things, but before I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, keeping an emergency go bag in the house wasn't something I ever worried about. But now I live less than a mile from the fault that earthquake experts say is the region's most dangerous. And among the most frequently asked questions in my house is, "Did you feel that?" However, natural disasters don't issue a prior warning, so my family and I have created an emergency plan for when the need arises: We keep our car fueled up, we have our portable chargers topped up and at the ready, and we all know how to shut off our gas. But maybe the most important prep work we've done is to put together an emergency go bag, also known as a bug-out bag. One item I've included in my go bag is a multitool by Gerber that includes pliers, scissors, screwdrivers, wire cutters, as well as a knife. You can drop a lot of money on a multitool, and some of those more expensive models are worth it. But because I wanted to buy more than one of these -- since my kids could always use one too -- both price and weight were important to me, which is why I chose the Gerber Dime 12-in-1 Mini multitool. Priced at about $30, this multitool is always worth grabbing, whether it's on sale or not. Below, I'll go through why I like this tool so much. For more mainstays of the go bag, here are our favorite power banks for iPhones and here are the best portable solar panels. Hey, did you know? CNET Deals texts are free, easy and save you money. Where this multitool fits into my emergency preparedness plans In addition to having bug-out bags at the ready, we keep an extensive earthquake kit in a big toy chest. With this big kit -- called a stay box -- weight isn't really an issue, and we can store enough food, water and whatever else we need to make it through a few days or even weeks. But in a go bag, each item has to be portable and essential, because weight adds up quickly. (This is the mini lantern I went with.) The Gerber Dime 12-in-1 Mini weighs just a few ounces and fits into the palm of my hand when it's folded up. Gerber Dime 12-in-1 Mini multitool specs Material: Stainless steel Stainless steel Dimensions when open: 5.5 x 4 x 0.6 inches 5.5 x 4 x 0.6 inches Dimensions when closed: 5.5 x 2.75 x 0.6 inches 5.5 x 2.75 x 0.6 inches Weight: 2.2 ounces 2.2 ounces Included tools: Pliers, wire cutter, tweezers, small and medium-size flat-head screwdrivers, bottle opener, retail package opener, plain-edge blade, scissors, fine and coarse files, lanyard/key ring Why the Gerber Dime Mini makes a great gift This is also a great tool to have in your car or your desk drawer at work. Gerber Gifting this multitool may seem overly practical, but there will eventually be a time that it will come in handy for anyone. Plus, you really can't beat its price compared to some of the competition out there. This is perfect for your handy friends who could always use another gadget for fixing things or someone building out their emergency bags.
CNET
27-05-2025
- General
- CNET
Post Memorial Day Deal: My Favorite Do-It-All Multitool Is Still Just $26 on Amazon
I have always liked DIY-ing my way around things, but before I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, keeping an emergency go bag in the house wasn't something I ever worried about. But now I live less than a mile from the fault that earthquake experts say is the region's most dangerous. And among the most frequently asked questions in my house is, "Did you feel that?" However, natural disasters don't issue a prior warning, so my family and I have created an emergency plan for when the need arises: We keep our car fueled up, we have our portable chargers topped up and at the ready, and we all know how to shut off our gas. But maybe the most important prep work we've done is to put together an emergency go bag, also known as a bug-out bag. One item I've included in my go bag is a multitool by Gerber that includes pliers, scissors, screwdrivers, wire cutters, as well as a knife and right now, you can grab one of these without paying the full price. You can drop a lot of money on a multitool, and some of those more expensive models are worth it. But because I wanted to buy more than one of these -- since my kids could always use one too -- both price and weight were important to me, which is why I chose the Gerber Dime 12-in-1 Mini multitool. Normally priced at about $30, this multitool is always worth grabbing, whether it's on sale or not. But it's still discounted after Memorial Day sales, allowing you to save a few bucks and get the red one for $26, a 10% discount. If red isn't your style, there's a green version available that costs $31 and a cool-looking all-black one for $29. Below, I'll go through why I like this tool so much. For more go bag mainstays, here are our favorite power banks for iPhones and the best portable solar panels. Hey, did you know? CNET Deals texts are free, easy and save you money. Where this multitool fits into my emergency preparedness plans In addition to having bug-out bags at the ready, we keep an extensive earthquake kit in a big toy chest. With this big kit -- called a stay box -- weight isn't really an issue, and we can store enough food, water and whatever else we need to make it through a few days or even weeks. But in a go bag, each item has to be portable and essential, because weight adds up quickly. (This is the mini lantern I went with.) The Gerber Dime 12-in-1 Mini weighs just a few ounces and fits into the palm of my hand when it's folded up. Gerber Dime 12-in-1 Mini multitool specs Material: Stainless steel Stainless steel Dimensions when open: 5.5 x 4 x 0.6 inches 5.5 x 4 x 0.6 inches Dimensions when closed: 5.5 x 2.75 x 0.6 inches 5.5 x 2.75 x 0.6 inches Weight: 2.2 ounces 2.2 ounces Included tools: Pliers, wire cutter, tweezers, small and medium-size flat-head screwdrivers, bottle opener, retail package opener, plain-edge blade, scissors, fine and coarse files, lanyard/key ring Why the Gerber Dime Mini makes a great gift This is also a great tool to have in your car or your desk drawer at work. Gerber Just note that the offer on this Gerber multitool was a part of Amazon's Memorial Day sale, and since the event has wrapped, the current discounted price is on borrowed time. Looking to save on more things to make your life easier? CNET's shopping experts have rounded up all the best post Memorial Day deals still available.
