PaloAltoOnline.com: Grant Enables Update of Scott Joplin's Opera "Treemonisha"

Scott Joplin

Palo Alto Online

Dec. 6, 2018

Stanford Live earns Hewlett grant

Grant will be used to create contemporary rendition of 'Treemonisha'

by Karla Kane / Palo Alto Weekly

Stanford Live and Weyni Mengesha have been awarded a $150,000 grant from the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation to commission and produce a contemporary reimagining of Scott Joplin's 1911 opera "Treemonisha," the foundation announced this week.

It is one of 10 new recipients of the Hewlett 50 Arts Commissions, a five-year, $8 million initiative supporting arts and nonprofit organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area.

"Treemonisha" will boast a new libretto and a range of musical styles, including jazz; traditional and contemporary classical music; West African idioms; and the genre Joplin helped popularize, ragtime.

"Joplin's story is extraordinarily progressive for its time, with the female protagonist elected leader of her community decades before women and most people of color could vote. Despite his fame, Joplin could not find backing for an opera by a black composer with an all-black cast of characters, and the full opera was never staged," according to the Hewlett Foundation's announcement. The story focuses on a community split in the aftermath of slavery.