Thursday, February 21, 2013

Dominique-René de Lerma: 'Black, Brown and Beige #3'

Dominique-René de Lerma writes:


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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