Treemonisha

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The cover of the original Treemonisha score.
The cover of the original Treemonisha score.

Treemonisha is an opera composed by the famed African-American ragtime composer Scott Joplin. Though it encompasses a wide range of musical styles other than ragtime, and Joplin himself never referred to it as such, [1] it is still 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 [2].

Treemonisha was not performed in its entirety until 1970, when the piano score was rediscovered. This discovery 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 [3]. 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 eventually kidnap her [4]. The musical accompaniment of the opera is in the romantic style that was popular in the early 20th century, and 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 [5].

Contents

[edit] History

Treemonisha was completed in 1910, and Joplin paid for a piano-vocal score to be published in 1911 [6]. At the time of the publishing, he sent a copy of the score to the American Musician and Art Journal, and Treemonisha received a glowing, full-page review in the June issue [7]. The review called it an "entirely new phase of musical art and... a thoroughly American opera (style)" [8], which fit in well with Joplin's desire to create a distinctive form of African American opera [9]. Despite this endorsement, the opera was never fully staged during his lifetime, and its sole performance was a concert read-through with piano in 1915 at the Lincoln Theater in Harlem, New York City, funded by Joplin himself [10]. 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" [11].

Aside from a concert-style performance in 1915 of the ballet from Act II, Frolic of the Bears by the Martin-Smith Music School, [12] the opera was forgotten until 1970, when the score was rediscovered.

The world premiere took place on January 27, 1972, as a joint production of the music department of Morehouse College and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in Atlanta, Georgia. The performance was directed by noted African-American dancer Katherine Dunham and conducted by Robert Shaw, one of the first major American conductors to hire both black and white singers for his chorale. The production was well-received by both audiences and critics [13].

Along with Joplin's first opera (A Guest of Honor, 1903), the orchestration notes for Treemonisha have been completely lost, so subsequent performances have been produced using orchestrations created by a variety of composers, including Thomas J. Anderson, Gunther Schuller, and most recently, Rick Benjamin.

Since its premiere, Treemonisha has been performed all over the United States, at venues such as the Houston Grand Opera, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and on Broadway to overwhelming critical and public acclaim. In 1976, Joplin was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize for "contributions to American music" [14].

[edit] Inspiration

Joplin's desire in writing Treemonisha was to make it both serious, like the European opera, as well as entertaining, drawing on the ragtime idiom only in the dance episodes of the story [15].

There has been speculation that the inspiration for Treemonisha may have come from Joplin's second wife, Freddie Alexander [16]. Like the title character, Alexander was educated, well-read and known to be a proponent of women's rights and African-American culture [17]. The fact that Joplin set the work in September 1884, the month and year of Alexander's birth, has added some weight to that theory.

Joplin biographer Edward A. Berlin, has stated that Treemonisha may have mirrored details from Joplin's own life. Specifically, that Joplin taught himself music fundamentals on a piano in the white home where his mother worked, just as in the opera, the title character receives her education in a white woman's home [18].

[edit] Plot synopsis

Treemonisha takes place in September 1884 on a plantation between Texarkana and the red River in Arkansas. Treemonisha is a young, educated black woman who refuses to accept the superstitions of the community. When the local conjurers try to sell Treemonisha's adoptive mother a "bag of luck", she denounces the conjurers, who retaliate by kidnapping her, and attempt to throw her into a wasp nest. Her beau, Remus, rescues her at the last moment and they return to the community. Accepted by her peers, she leads a campaign to educate the people around her.

[edit] Characters

  • Andy, friend of Treemonisha
  • Cephus, a conjurer
  • Lucy, friend of Treemonisha
  • Luddud, a conjurer
  • Monisha, Treemonisha's supposed mother
  • Ned, Treemonisha's father
  • Parson Alltalk, a preacher
  • Remus, friend of Treemonisha
  • Simon, a conjurer
  • Treemonisha, a young, educated freed slave
  • Zodzetrick, a conjurer

[edit] Original cast

1972 Atlanta World Premiere [19]

  • Alpha Floyd (Treemonisha)
  • Louise Parker (Monisha)
  • Seth McCoy (Remus)
  • Simon Estes (Ned)

[edit] Houston Grand Opera

In 1982, the Houston Grand Opera produced a video of the production by Frank Corsaro, directed for television by Sidney Smith. This used the Schuller orchestration and starred Carmen Balthrop as Treemonisha, Delores Ivory as Monisha, and Obba Babatunde as Zodzetrick. Deutsche Grammophon had previously released the audio version of this production on LP's back in 1976.

Treemohisha on IMDb

[edit] References

[edit] Notes

  1. ^  Operaam.org
  2. ^  Southern, pg. 537
  3. ^  Chase, pg. 545
  4. ^  Southern, pg. 537
  5. ^  Southern, pgs. 537-540
  6. ^  Chase, pg. 546
  7. ^  Vance's Fantastic Classic Black Music Hall of Fame
  8. ^  Chase, pg. 546
  9. ^  Vance's Fantastic Classic Black Music Hall of Fame
  10. ^  Operaam.org
  11. ^  Southern, pg. 324 Southern cites Rudi Blesh, "Scott Joplin: Black-American Classicist", The Collected Works of Scott Joplin (New York, 1971), p. xxxix
  12. ^  Center for Black Music Research Digest
  13. ^  Southern, pg. 537
  14. ^  The Pulitzer Prizes
  15. ^  Chase, pg. 545
  16. ^  Garlic.com
  17. ^  The Unconservatory
  18. ^  The Scott Joplin International Ragtime Foundation
  19. ^  Operaam.org

[edit] Further reading

  • Edward A. Berlin, King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era (Hardcover, New York: Oxford University, 1994; Paperback - New York: Oxford University, 1996)

[edit] External links

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