- Treemonisha, with music and libretto by Joplin, was the composer’s second opera. He completed it in 1910, and self-published it in 1911 when he could not find a publisher willing to take it on.1
- The opera did not receive a full staging in Joplin’s lifetime, though it received partial and unstaged performances. The work finally premiered in 1972 at Morehouse College in Atlanta, in a performance conducted by Robert Shaw. The Houston Grand Opera gave the first professional performance in 1975.2
- Scott Joplin won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1976, the year after the professional premiere of Treemonisha.
- The opera’s theme is the importance of education for the advancement of African-Americans: particularly, the importance of education for women as well as men.3 The opera’s protagonist is a young woman who wants to become a teacher and must overcome supernatural antagonists to do so.4
- Joplin scholar Edward Berlin suggests that Treemonisha contains a tribute to Joplin’s late Freddie Alexander Joplin, who died in 1904 of a sudden illness, only two months after her marriage to Scott Joplin. Joplin set the action of Treemonisha in the month and year of Freddie’s birth.5
- Synopsis from Opera America
Sources
- Edward A. Berlin, “Joplin, Scott,” Grove Music Online (October 16, 2013), accessed June 9, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002253061.
- “Treemonisha,” The Library of Congress, accessed June 9, 2021, https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200035812/.
- Ibid.
- Edward A. Berlin, “Joplin, Scott,” Grove Music Online (October 16, 2013), accessed June 9, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002253061.
- Berlin, “Joplin, Scott,” Grove Music Online.
Cut IDs
14366 49605 49606 49607