Broadway World UK on Stanford Live premiering Scott Joplin's "Treemonisha" :

Broadway World
UK Regional
Feb. 13, 2020

This spring, Stanford Live presents the world premiere of Scott Joplin's Treemonisha, a 21st-century reimagining of the sole surviving opera by the "King of Ragtime" (April 23-26). Produced by Canada's Volcano Theatre, in association with Moveable Beast, and led by a predominantly Black, female creative team, the new work combines original source material from Treemonisha (c. 1911), Joplin's visionary tale of community and female leadership, with a new story and libretto by playwright and broadcaster Leah-Simone Bowen, working with co-librettist Cheryl L. Davis, and expanded musical arrangements and new orchestrations by composers Jessie Montgomery and Jannina Norpoth. In the title role, soprano Neema Bickersteth - "an incredible performer" (The Guardian) whose "galvanic voice outshines anything else onstage" (Vancouver Observer) - heads an all-Black cast, with an all-Black majority-female, nine-piece orchestra performing on Western and African instruments, under the award-winning stage direction of Weyni Mengesha, and conducted by Jeri Lynne Johnson.

The genius of Joplin's score lies in the fusion of his famed ragtime syncopations with classical, folk and gospel sounds. While retaining much of this original source material, the new arrangements also draw on some of the genres his work would later inspire, such as jazz, R&B and American song. 

Chris Lorway, Executive Director of Stanford Live, says: "We're thrilled to have this work as the centerpiece of our 2019-20 season. As the world changes around us, it is critically important to hear stories about women - and in particular women of color - who bring communities together and take the culture forward."

Joplin was posthumously awarded the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Treemonisha, one of the few surviving performance pieces about post-slavery life by a Black artist from that era. Set in the 1880s, shortly after Reconstruction was abandoned by the U.S. government, it is the story of a young woman chosen by a Black community to be its leader. Written before women were granted the right to vote, the opera was feminist and progressive, introducing conversations about Black identity that were far ahead of its time. This proved too thematically subversive for the early-1900s New York opera scene, which was, in any case, unready to embrace a work written by a Black composer for an all-Black cast. As a result, Treemonisha remained largely unknown until its first complete performance in 1972. By this time only the piano and vocal score survived, the orchestral parts having been thrown out after Joplin's death in 1917. His forward-looking, prize-winning opera only narrowly escaped being lost altogether.