Scott Joplin's Opera "Treemonisha"

I love exploring rare, forgotten, or unjustly neglected music, as well as musical curiosities. An opera written by a composer famous almost entirely for his ragtime piano pieces fits that bill for me.

It is probably safe to say that most of you have not heard this music, or even of it, so I thought I'd share a bit of what I know about it with a few representative selections, and see what sticks. It is a window into an aspect of its composer we don't usually get to experience.

Scott Joplin (1868-1917), the son of former African-American slaves, was as ambitious as he was talented, having aspirations to higher artistic expressions as well as to the elevation of his ragtime specialty to respectability within the musical establishment. These aspirations are evidenced in his music for the stage, among other things. While he was considered a successful composer even in his day due to the great popularity of his ragtime piano music, many of Joplin's efforts to break through the barriers of so-called serious music were hindered by the prevailing narrow view of what constituted such at the time, as well as by his race in a place and time where racial prejudice was the norm.

It is not generally known that Joplin actually wrote two operas. The first was A Guest of Honor (1903), which dramatised an historic (and at the time, controversial) gala dinner hosted by US President Theodore Roosevelt in honour of civil rights leader and educator Booker T. Washington in 1901. Sadly, the score was lost in an unfortunate incident while Joplin was touring a production of the opera in the Midwest, and it has never resurfaced.

Joplin completed his second and final opera Treemonisha in 1910, and published it the following year. Despite a glowing endorsement from the American Musician and Art Journal, it received only one performance during his lifetime - a thin, unstaged reading with piano in Harlem, New York in 1915 that failed to impress its audience. Joplin died two years later of dementia resulting from tertiary syphilis, and the opera was forgotten until the score was rediscovered in 1970 and it was premiered in Atlanta in 1972. Since then it has enjoyed several critically and publicly acclaimed revivals - most notably by the Houston Grand Opera, the Kennedy Centre in Washington, D.C., and on Broadway - and is now performed regularly throughout the United States.

Joplin intended to orchestrate Treemonisha himself, but his orchestration notes have not yet come to light and are feared lost. His piano score has been orchestrated by several composers; the celebrated Houston Grand Opera production was scored effectively and authentically for a typical theatre orchestra of the period by Gunther Schuller.

Set in Post-Reconstruction-Era Arkansas of the 1880s, the story of Treemonisha is an allegory for the triumph of education and enlightenment over ignorance and superstition as a means for advancement of the Black race, as well as the emancipation and leadership of women - with an all-Black cast of characters that range from scoundrel conjurers to a humble, virtuous heroine who leads her people from darkness into light. These ideas and the manner in which they are presented were revolutionary in their time and still resonate today. Joplin wrote the libretto himself, and despite some literary awkwardness, the overarching theme is conveyed effectively, not in any small part by the delightful music to which it is set - an engaging potpourri of musical styles, from folk to classical, applied skillfully to dramatic effect - evidencing the fuller scope of Joplin's genius.

The few representative selections below are among my favourites, performed by the Houston Grand Opera. I hope you enjoy them, and it would be interesting to know what you think.

No. 1 - Overture

Act I - No. 4 - We're Goin' Around (A Ring Play) (Song and Dance with Chorus)

Act II - No. 11 - Superstition (Song with Chorus)

Act II - No. 18 - Aunt Dinah Has Blowed de Horn (Chorus)

Act III - No. 22 - Wrong Is Never Right (Aria and Chorus)

Act III - No. 27 (Finale) - A Real Slow Drag (Full Ensemble)

That is mighty interesting, I wasn't familiar with Scott Joplin's work outside his major rags. :blink: