Treemonisha

Treemonisha (1911/1972) is an opera composed by the African-American composer Scott Joplin, most famous for his ragtime piano works. Though it encompasses a wide range of musical styles other than ragtime, and Joplin did not refer to it as such, it is sometimes incorrectly referred to as a "ragtime opera". The music of Treemonisha includes an overture and prelude, along with various recitatives, choruses, small ensemble pieces, a ballet, and a few arias.

The opera was virtually unheard of until its first complete performance in 1972. The performance was called a "semimiracle" by music historian Gilbert Chase, who said Treemonisha "bestowed its creative vitality and moral message upon many thousands of delighted listeners and viewers" when it was recreated. The musical style of the opera is the popular romantic one of the early 20th century. It has been described as "charming and piquant and ... deeply moving", with elements of black folk songs and dances, including a kind of pre-blues music, spirituals, and a call-and-response style scene involving a congregation and preacher.

The opera's theme is that education is the salvation of the Negro race, represented by the heroine and symbolic educator Treemonisha, who runs into trouble with a local band of magicians who kidnap her.

Treemonisha was completed in 1910, and Joplin paid for a piano-vocal score to be published in 1911. At the time of the publication, he sent a copy of the score to the American Musician and Art Journal. Treemonisha received a glowing, full-page review in the June issue. The review called it an "entirely new phase of musical art and... a thoroughly American opera (style)", which fit in well with Joplin's desire to create a distinctive form of African-American opera.

Despite this endorsement, the opera was never fully staged during his lifetime. Its sole performance was a concert read-through with Joplin at the piano in 1915 at the Lincoln Theater in Harlem, New York, paid for by Joplin. One of Joplin's friends, Sam Patterson, described this performance as "thin and unconvincing, little better than a rehearsal... its special quality (would have been) lost on the typical Harlem audience (that was) sophisticated enough to reject their folk past but not sufficiently so to relish a return to it".

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