Edward Savage, English scholar

Edward Savage, a retired University of Minnesota English professor, believed students should be encouraged to pursue their own academic interests and not be told what line of inquiry to follow.

Savage, whose own scholarly work led to a personal passion for opera, died of esophageal cancer on April 4 in St. Paul. The longtime Falcon Heights resident was 84.

Charles Nolte, the retired artistic head of theater at the University of Minnesota, said Savage became very interested in opera because of the subject of his doctoral dissertation, which was about dramatic versions of "Tristan and Isolde."

Nolte said Savage was a "great scholar" with whom he enjoyed arguing about plays and operas.

"He was a generous friend," said Nolte, for whom the university's Charles Nolte Experimental Theatre is named. "He was charismatic and low-key."

In the early 1990s, Savage appeared in the University of Minnesota production of Anton Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard," and while he was a teacher in Cairo decades ago, he directed student plays there.

"He was great supporter of university theater," said Nolte.

During the 1950s and 1960s, he taught in Tarsus, Turkey, Cairo and colleges in Nebraska and Michigan.

Savage earned his master's degree in 1953 and his Ph.D. in 1959 from the University of Minnesota, joining the university faculty in the mid-1960s. He taught medieval literature and Shakespeare.

Savage gave his students the confidence to support their scholarly positions because he respected them, said a former student, Pat Eldred, now an English professor at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul. "He encouraged us to pursue our own academic interests," Eldred said.

His niece, Lynn Smith of Harrisonburg, Va., said he was a proponent of classical education. "He encouraged the thorough and enthusiastic investigation of ideas," she said.

Savage retired in 1991 and then taught courses in programs such as the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, affiliated with the University of Minnesota.

In March, though ill, he attended a five-hour simulcast of the opera "Tristan and Isolde," staged by the New York Metropolitan Opera.