A Scholar Under Siege is an opera in two acts by contemporary American composer Michael Braz. Braz also wrote the English language libretto for the opera which was composed for the centenary of Georgia Southern University. It premiered on April 20, 2007 in Statesboro, Georgia.
The opera takes as its subject the historic confrontation between Georgia governor Eugene Talmadge and Marvin Pittman who was president of Georgia Teachers College which later became Georgia Southern University. [1] This episode in Georgia history is sometimes known as the "Cocking affair." In brief, Talmadge fired Walter Cocking who was dean of the College of Education at the University of Georgia. Talmadge accused Cocking of championing integration, in this case the admission of African American students to historically all-white educational institutions. Talmadge flamboyantly declared that he would fire anyone who stood for "communism or racial equality". Talmadge fired Pittman for supporting Cocking against Talmadge. As a result of the firings, the teacher's college lost its accreditation. Students rallied, and Pittman and Cocking were eventually rehired. [1]
A Scholar Under Siege closely follows this story line with fictional dialog added for narrative effect. Pittman emerges as the hero and moral center of the opera which takes on overtones of its World War II political backdrop when Pittman sings — referring to Talmadge, "One Hitler anywhere is one too many". [2] The cast of characters features only slightly fictionalized versions of many historic characters including not only Talmadge, Cocking, and Pittman, but also Atlanta Journal-Constitution editor Ralph McGill, Georgia Teachers College custodian Mose Bass, [2] and Georgia Southern University alumnus and benefactor Jack Averitt. In Braz's libretto, Averitt is reimagined as the leader of the student movement that resulted in the restoration of Marvin Pittman to his post as university president. In real life, Averitt was a friend of the Pittman family, but did not lead the charge to have the president reinstalled. [3]
Michael Braz, the composer of A Scholar Under Siege, is Professor of Music at Georgia Southern University. For nine years, he was also the principal keyboardist for the Augusta Symphony Orchestra. His previous compositions include his 1975 chamber opera, Memoirs from the Holocaust. [4]
Braz spent three years researching the historical background of A Scholar Under Siege and credits conversations with Georgia Southern colleagues, including retired Professor Dr. Del Presley, whose centennial history of Georgia Southern University was completed at the time of the opera's production. The opera premiered on April 20, 2007 at Georgia Southern University's Performing Arts Center, conducted by Rodney H. Caldwell. The production, which ran for three performances was produced and directed by Sarah Hancock with set design by Gary Dartt, costume design Brenda Dartt, lighting design by Kelly Berry, and choreography by Mallory Lanier. [5]
The principal roles were sung by:
The cast also included:
Daniel Scofield (Dr. Alois Hundhammer), John Marshall (Jurt Feyer), Megan Otte (Mae Michael), Violet Martin (Maime Veazey), Shawn Tupper (Ernest Cannon), John Bressler (Dr. R. J. H. DeLoach), Cyril Durant (Tommie Banks), Daniel Scofield (Sandy Beaver), Japheth Parker (Ormonde Hunter), Mark Diamond (Ellis Arnall), John Marshall (James Peters), Zac Case (Joe Ben Jackson), Sara Teate (Mrs. Sylla Hamilton), Liz Zettler (Hester Newton), Leo Parrish (Dr. Steadman V. Sanford). [5]
The Savannah Morning News said that it mirrored Braz's influences which are cited as Benjamin Britten, Béla Bartók, and Leonard Bernstein. Jim Galloway in the Atlanta Journal Constitution described Braz as using "a bluesy, flat-noted tune to suggest the rather corrupt insider nature of Georgia’s state politics in the 1940s." [6]
A Scholar Under Siege received considerable media attention probably because it encapsules a race struggle from which the southern United States are still recovering today. In an Associated Press article about A Scholar Under Siege, Russ Bynum wrote, "Talmadge's defeat proved Georgia voters had limits to how far they would go to defend racial inequality." [2] Braz said in an interview with the Savannah Morning News that political thinkers were noticing his opera because they saw parallels between the administrations of Eugene Talmadge and George W. Bush. [7] "Most attention to the opera so far has been from political writers who are fascinated with the text more than the music," Braz said. [7] In the same interview, Braz described his opera as "a study of two conflicting views of power. Talmadge aimed to keep people afraid so that they would vote for him. For him, power was in the numbers. For Pittman, power was in education, in the heart and mind." [7]
That his opera would be viewed as a political allegory pointing to the theater of current events was not an outcome that Braz specifically sought, he said in an interview for Eyrie, a Georgia Southern University internal publication, but he conceded that he did hate bullying, adding, "If it’s not stood up to, we’re saying it’s okay." [3]
Savannah is the oldest city in the U.S. state of Georgia and the county seat of Chatham County. Established in 1733 on the Savannah River, the city of Savannah became the British colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later the first state capital of Georgia. A strategic port city in the American Revolution and during the American Civil War, Savannah is today an industrial center and an important Atlantic seaport. It is Georgia's fifth most populous city, with a 2020 U.S. census population of 147,780. The Savannah metropolitan area, Georgia's third-largest, had a 2020 population of 404,798.
Statesboro is the most populous city in and county seat of Bulloch County, Georgia, United States. Located in the southeastern part of the state, its population was 33,438 at the 2020 census. It is the principal city of the Statesboro micropolitan area, which had 81,099 residents, and is part of the Savannah–Hinesville–Statesboro combined statistical area.
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Georgia Southern University is a public research university in the U.S. state of Georgia. The largest campus is in Statesboro, with additional campuses in Savannah and Hinesville. Founded in 1906, Georgia Southern is the fifth-largest institution in the University System of Georgia. The university offers over 140 different academic majors in the bachelor's, master's, and doctoral levels. The university has a combined enrollment of approximately 27,000 students from all 50 states and over 80 countries. Georgia Southern is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity" and a "comprehensive" university by the University System of Georgia.
Eugene Talmadge was an attorney and American politician who served three terms as the 67th governor of Georgia, from 1933 to 1937, and then again from 1941 to 1943. Elected to a fourth term in November 1946, he died before his inauguration, scheduled for January 1947. Only Talmadge and Joe Brown, in the mid-19th century, have been elected four times as governor of Georgia.
Ronald Bryan "Bo" Ginn, was an American politician who represented Georgia's 1st congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 1973 to 1983.
East Georgia State College (EGSC) is a public college in Swainsboro, Georgia. It is part of the University System of Georgia. As an access institution, the college serves a predominantly rural area of 24 counties in Georgia's coastal plain from its three campus locations.
Ralph Emerson McGill was an American journalist and editorialist. An anti-segregationist editor, he published the Atlanta Constitution newspaper. He was a member of the Peabody Awards Board of Jurors, serving from 1945 to 1968. He won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 1959.
Francys Johnson is an American civil rights attorney, pastor and educator. He is in private practice as an attorney in Statesboro, Georgia. He has lectured on constitutional and criminal law, civil rights and race and politics at Savannah State University and Georgia Southern University.
U.S. Highway 25 (US 25) is a United States Numbered Highway that travels from Brunswick, Georgia, to the Kentucky–Ohio state line, where Covington, Kentucky, meets Cincinnati, Ohio, at the Ohio River. In the U.S. state of Georgia, US 25 is as a 190.0-mile-long (305.8 km) highway that travels south to north in the eastern part of the state, near the Atlantic Ocean, serving Statesboro and the Brunswick and Augusta metropolitan areas on its path from Brunswick to South Carolina at the Savannah River. Its routing travels through portions of Glynn, Wayne, Long, Tattnall, Evans, Bulloch, Jenkins, Burke, and Richmond counties.
Sports in Georgia include professional teams, Olympic Games contenders and medalists, collegiate teams in major and small-school conferences and associations, and active amateur teams and individual sports.
The Savannah metropolitan area, officially named the Savannah metropolitan statistical area by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, is a metropolitan statistical area in the U.S. state of Georgia. It is centered on the city of Savannah and encompasses three counties: Bryan, Chatham, and Effingham.
Southern Pride is the name for the marching band of Georgia Southern University located in Statesboro, Georgia.
The Cocking affair was an attempt in 1941 by Georgia governor Eugene Talmadge to exert direct control over the state's educational system, particularly through the firing of Professor Walter Cocking because of his support for racial integration, and the subsequent removal of members of the Georgia Board of Regents who disagreed with the decision. It has been made into an opera entitled A Scholar Under Siege.
The Three governors controversy was a political crisis in the U.S. state of Georgia, from 1946 to 1947. On December 21, 1946, Eugene Talmadge, the governor-elect of Georgia, died before taking office. The state constitution did not specify who would assume the governorship in such a situation, so three men made claims to the governorship: Ellis Arnall, the outgoing governor; Melvin E. Thompson, the lieutenant governor-elect; and Herman Talmadge, Eugene Talmadge's son. Eventually a ruling by the Supreme Court of Georgia settled the matter in favor of Thompson. Georgia's Secretary of State Ben Fortson hid the state seal in his wheelchair so no official business could be conducted until the controversy was settled.
The lynching of Paul Reed and Will Cato occurred in Statesboro, Georgia on August 16, 1904. Five members of a white farm family, the Hodges, had been murdered and their house burned to hide the crime. Paul Reed and Will Cato, who were African-American, were tried and convicted for the murders. Despite militia having been brought in from Savannah to protect them, the two men were taken by a mob from the courthouse immediately after their trials, chained to a tree stump, and burned. In the immediate aftermath, four more African-Americans were shot, three of them dying, and others were flogged.
Roy Vincent Harris was an American politician and newspaper publisher in the U.S. state of Georgia during the mid-1900s. From the 1920s until the 1940s, Harris served several terms in both the Georgia House of Representatives and the Georgia State Senate, and was twice the speaker of the house, from 1937 to 1940 and again from 1943 to 1946. Historian Harold Paulk Henderson has called Harris "one of Georgia's most capable behind-the-scenes politicians".