During the Great Depression, the federal government embarked on many programs to combat unemployment. One of the more unusual was the production of an opera based on the Battle of Gettysburg. Morris Hutchins Ruger composed the score, and Arthur Robinson wrote the libretto.
Ruger carefully researched the Battle of Gettysburg and the aftermath. His approach to composition was symphonic, based on his classical training at Columbia and Northwestern University. Ruger made frequent use of typically American music, including “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and the “Star Spangled Banner.”
When the opera premiered at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles on September 23, 1938, it featured a full symphony orchestra and a large chorus of 200. While the opera lacked a conventional plot, it played out like a dramatic poem, which the music intensified. Critics remarked on Gettysburg’s “haunting loveliness, tinged with the pathos of war.”
Learn more about the Gettysburg opera in the Morris Hutchins Ruger papers at UW’s American Heritage Center.