Scott Joplin’s opera Treemonisha
This February, the Daily Classical Music Post celebrates Black composers and musicians whose music has been suppressed and ignored. All of these musicians should be added to the music history and music theory curriculum. https://youtu.be/uhQ9jBNK91g Scott Joplin (c. 1868–1917), known as the King of Ragtime, was so much more than that. He had a gift for combining classical music with music local to his childhood home in Texarkana. Joplin’s opera Treemonisha (composed in 1911) was actually his second opera. The first, A Guest of Honor , which reportedly was based on the White House dinner that Teddy Roosevelt held in 1901 for Booker T. Washington, was performed on a national tour organized by Joplin himself. Some time during the tour, the box office receipts were stolen. In order to cover the payroll and tour expenses, the score for A Guest of Honor was confiscated and was never seen again. Joplin’s three-act opera Treemonisha is not a ragtime opera, although there are some dance ...