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 fi

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