The seduction of Treemonisha.
The craze for authenticity now hits Joplin,
but before that we went hors de série with Stephen Foster and let Louis
Armstrong do-wop his way past the ...nostalgia for
slavery, the good ole massa, and Virginny's plantation (we could have paused
for Frank Johnson and Blind Tom). When we finally got back to Texarkana, it
was via the Paragon Ragtime Ensemble.
But I thought back, forty years now, to Atlanta,
when T. J. Anderson joined with Robert Shaw, Wendell Whalum, Louise Parker,
Seth McCoy, Sir Willard White, Katherine Dunham, and students from Morehouse
and Spellman to give Treemonisha her first staging, to a mixed audience, all beaming
with smiles of joy as the dancers left the stage for the hall's aisles. I sat
with Vera Lawrence, who was to reprint Joplin's piano-vocal score along with
his (almost) opera omnia. At a reception that followed, T. J. asked me
if I would serve on a board for the foundation's subsequent profits, which would
support Black music talents and research. Soon after, he was invited to join
the faculty at Tufts University, just outside Boston (as almost everything
is). When he got there, he and Lois invited Gunther Schuller (then with the
New England Conservatory) for supper, after which he played the NPR tape of the
opera. Then around Thanksgiving, Louise Parker called me with the news that Treemonisha
had been produced at Tanglewood and was on its way to Houston, New York, Europe
and VHS. That was when I heard that T. J.'s Uraufführung had given way
to a new version, this by Gunther. It was now newly cast, and Louise was left
out, along with many others. I also heard that the bandwagon had room for Bill
Bolcom and, with a call from Columbia Records, that their staff arrangers would
be jumping on board.
This was the second of three operas by Joplin.
The first, A guest of honor, seems to have been lost after Joplin gave
the première. And If probably never saw daylight, being contemplated at
the end of Joplin's life. He was almost totally ignored then, but not by Rudi
Blesh, until T. J. Anderson lit the revival.
Treemonisha's basic theme, which she advanced,
is that education must overcome superstition and conjuring -- totally consonant
with the ideals of the Harlem Renaissance. Incongruously it had been
stimulated but not influenced by Wagner. Joplin had proudly arranged for a
hearing after he arrived in New York, but it was a complete flop. We don't
know who was there, but surely he had wanted support from J. Rosamond Johnson
and his brother, from Jim Europe, Bert Williams and George Walker, perhaps
Harry Burleigh, and certainly Will Marion Cook. The latter, who was an
uninhibited curmudgeon of long standing, would have been the most vociferous to
condemn this naive essay by that unsophisticated hick from somewhere (anywhere!)
west of the Hudson River. Joplin, crushed, faced death from syphilis a few years
later.
As for Treemonisha, she has emerged, weary but
unravished, to captivate a new public with her production numbers, example for women's
liberation, opera arias, barbershop quartet, and hornet's nest (a euphemism for
the Klan?). Joplin has not always been so fortunate. In 1973, Marvin Hamlisch
was celebrated for writing Joplin's music.
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Dominique-René
de Lerma
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