Opera Southern tells the story of a 14-year-old whose death became a symbol for civil rights

Charles Lloyd Jr. knew he had to be careful in “going there,” for his own emotional well-being and the audience’s.

Emmett Till was only 14 years old, after all, just a kid who didn’t think whistling at Carolyn Bryant was a big deal. But the year was 1955, and Till was a black kid from Chicago visiting family in Money, Miss. Bryant was white.

Till’s action proved fatal. The teen had no Atticus Finch standing up for him against an angry mob of white men. He had to go it alone when his perpetrators dragged him from his bedroom, then beat and lynched him before weighting him down a fan blade before before tossing his broken body into the Tallhatchie River.

His bloated body was discovered three days later and returned to Chicago. Mamie Till Bradley had an open casket funeral to expose the world to the racial brutality endured by her only son, who would become both a martyr and icon in the civil rights movement.                      

Lloyd knows that thinking about it even now can potentially put him in an emotionally dark place, which is why he originally wrote his opera, “Emmett Till,” in only two acts.

Opera Southern of Southern University will open Lloyd’s newly revised opera, “Emmett Till: An Opera in 3 Acts,” Tuesday, May 16, followed by a second performance on Thursday, May 18, in the Manship Theatre in the Shaw Center for the Arts. 

The whistle wasn’t there in 2008 when the Trilogy Opera Co. of Newark, N.J., commissioned Lloyd to write it. Neither was Carolyn Bryant emerging from her family grocery store nor the subsequent abduction and torture of Till, who was just being a typical 14-year-old boy.

Bryant later testified in court that Till grabbed and verbally threatened her. She later admitted that she’d lied. She died three weeks ago on April 25.

Lloyd knew fans of his opera were right. The story was incomplete without the whistle, so he “went there.”

“I was very careful in writing that first act, because I knew how it would affect me,” said Lloyd, a professor of music and music program director at Southern University. “So, I went back and added the whistle then put in a dream sequence that had Emmett Till encountering some famous civil rights personalities. It’s a way for the audience to know that he died without having to put them through the torture he endured.”

That’s when the production became an opera in three acts, and in its own way, the May 16 performance will be a second premiere for the show.

“It’ll be the first time the opera will be performed with the first act,” Lloyd said. “So, the audience will be the first to see it.”

Opera Southern Artistic Director Richard Hobson sees it as an entirely new opera.

“It’s basically a new piece,” he said. “The interaction between the characters is more powerful.”

Lloyd not only composed the music for this production but also wrote its libretto, or words. Musically, the opera reflects the amalgamation of Lloyd’s love for Negro spirituals and gospel, as sung in Mississippi Delta during the 1950s, as well as the bel canto style of 19th century Italy.

The cast includes principle players and a chorus accompanied by a live orchestra.

“Our orchestra is made up of musicians from the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra,” Hobson said. “Our cast, including our chorus, is easily 35 people.”

With the exception of its principle singers, the cast is made up Southern University students, alumni and community members. All are volunteers.

“They have their own lives, jobs, families, friends and dogs,” Hobson said. “It’s like herding cats, but they all want to be here. So, we’ve had to add extra rehearsals, particularly for the chorus. They’re here on their own time.”

This is the third opera staged Opera Southern, following productions of “Porgy and Bess” and “Rigoletto Reimagined.” The company is working on purchasing the rights for “Imitation of Life,” an opera based on the 1959 classic film exploring race relations and friendship between two widowed mothers, one black and the other white, in the 1940s and ’50s.     

“We’d like to perform at least one opera a year,” Hobson said. “That’s the one we’d like to do next.”