Composers who work outside the sphere of classical music have sometimes turned to opera as an outlet for their higher artistic aspirations. Bernard Herrmann perceived his now obscure opera Wuthering Heights as superior to his marvelous film scores. Arthur Sullivan thought his Ivanhoe would elevate him to aesthetic heights far beyond his operettas. George Gershwin wrote Porgy and Bess.
Scott Joplin was already hailed as the “king of ragtime,” thanks to classics like “Maple Leaf Rag” and “The Entertainer,” when he composed his only surviving opera, Treemonisha, which last month was seen in a new performing edition at the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (OTSL). Completed in 1910, it received an under-rehearsed run-through with piano that year, and a vocal score was published, at Joplin’s expense, the following year. But despite strenuous efforts by Joplin, it never had a true premiere during his lifetime.
OTSL’s new edition by Damien Sneed (composer) and Karen Chilton (librettist) takes its place among efforts to resurrect the opera going back more than fifty years by, among others, Vera Brodsky Lawrence, William Bolcom, and Gunther Schuller. Robert Shaw conducted the world premiere with the Atlanta Symphony in 1972. In the absence of Joplin’s original orchestration, which does not survive, multiple orchestrations have been attempted, including one by Schuller used in a Houston Grand Opera staging, and a more recent one by Rick Benjamin scored for a twelve-piece band of the sort Joplin might have worked with.
For the new edition Sneed prepared still another orchestration, but its most striking attribute is a new biographical prologue and epilogue to the opera, in which Joplin’s second wife Freddie, who died ten weeks after their marriage in 1904, is portrayed as the composer’s muse. The opera itself, for which Joplin wrote his own libretto, is kept essentially intact (apart from a few minor cuts). Set in Arkansas during the 1880s, it deals with a community of former slaves living on an old plantation. As they struggle to establish themselves, the freedmen face adversity from a group of superstitious antagonists who kidnap Treemonisha, a young woman discovered as a baby near a magical tree and the only person in the community with an education. She is eventually rescued by her friend Remus, and upon her return the people hail her and proclaim her as their leader.
The libretto’s weaknesses are hard to disguise, yet the story comes across more potently than might be expected, even if its language does tend toward the didactic and unsophisticated. (“Wrong is never right / And wrong you should not do,” we are told.) The main glory of Treemonisha—surprise!—is its often infectious music. The real surprise is that it doesn’t have a lot of ragtime, except in the marvelous dance numbers, such as the toe-tapping “Aunt Dinah has Blowed de Horn” and the concluding “Real Slow Drag.” Some commentators, noting that Joplin was schooled in the European classical tradition, have emphasized Treemonisha’s link to European opera, even comparing its magic tree to the ash tree in Die Walküre. In the solo numbers and ensembles that make up the bulk of the opera—tuneful, polished, dramatically apt—one hears much reminiscent of operettas from both sides of the Atlantic.
The new prologue and epilogue (which frame Joplin’s opera as Acts I and V) make effective use of music from the opera and other Joplin compositions, but the highpoint is an expressive aria for Freddie in Act I in the musical style of Joplin (at over a half hour, however, the act outlasts its welcome—Act V is considerably shorter). Oddly, Joplin is portrayed as showing more concern for his opera than for his bride’s fragile health, proclaiming, rather sanctimoniously, after her death that their love will live on through Treemonisha and Remus (performed in the new edition by the same singers).
It is to the credit of Sneed and Chilton that they have allowed Joplin’s work itself to play out essentially as he wrote it, and the production by Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj (with sets designed by Marsha Ginsberg) followed suit. It vividly portrayed the camaraderie of the story’s black community, amusingly so when their parson (Markel Reed) spoke of redemption, and, overall, it caught the opera’s upbeat tone. Dede Ayite’s colorful costumes were an asset. Brandie Inez Sutton brought a soprano of gleam and resonance to Treemonisha and Freddie and sang with a commitment that made plausible the people’s trust in Treemonisha. The night I attended, Camron Gray substituted as Joplin and Remus, demonstrating a thorough knowledge of the part and performing honorably. As Treemonisha’s adoptive parents, Olivia Johnson (another substitute) did well in Monisha’s long aria detailing the girl’s origin, and Norman Garrett excelled in Ned’s arresting aria, “When villains ramble far and near.” Phillip Bullock sang menacingly as the conjuror Zodzetrick. OTSL’s chorus, composed of members of its young artist program, shone in the extensive choral music. Presiding over nearly forty members of the Saint Louis Symphony, George Manahan was an alert conductor.