Scott Joplin's Treemonisha: America's Forgotten Opera

A video looking into Scott Joplin's fantastic but mostly forgotten opera Treemonisha.

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[jeroenl]

I didn't know he wrote an opera. I only knew him from pieces like Maple Leaf Rag and The Entertainer so I always thinked of him as a writer of popular songs. This made me respect him much more!

[mrgrinch]

7:16
"We will trust you as out leader" this number is now my favorite in Treemonisha. When your listening to anything and don't give something enough attention, it comes back at you and is new material to appriciate. Thats part of the beauty of listening to music, you happen to skip something over, but its open for you to come back and see what you really missed.

[djtomt]

Upon each new learning of a rag or waltz it becomes more evident to me that Joplin was a complete genius. Thank goodness we have as much documentation as we do. Great video!

[mrs.g.]

All of that music thrown into a garbage can and lost forever.😢 It's an understatement for me to say, "That's heartbreaking!" I'm going on Amazon to see if I can get my own CD or DVD of Treemonisha. I can't find it at Best Buy or even Barnes & Noble. I viewed The Houston Grand Opera's production a few days ago on YouTube and I was really blown away. Of all the operas I like, Scott Joplin's opera is my favorite.

[Dario_Ronchi]

Well done! Treemonisha is a hidden treasure and Joplin is a great Master!!

[susandrakenviller]

Heard the Houston Opera version of Treemonisha around a year ago and I was very moved by it on different levels. I studied opera and piano so for me this was a great discovery, something that happens not so often anymore in my muscial life. Would love to hear it live someday.

[dallinfullmer]

It’s so interesting to me why this was forgotten, it’s controversial for its time, and now it stands as a great example of black excellence. Why is it not remembered?

[Emanistan]

The story of the boxes sent to the garbage sets the wheels in my head turning. Paper, especially when stacked together, tends to survive well when buried, and dumps have been successfully excavated for other treasures; I think of the 1983 video game dump in New Mexico excavated in 2014. It would an expensive endeavor of course, but the paper manuscripts, once they were thoroughly studied and documented, would be extremely valuable to collectors and would probably more than finance any excavation...of course all of this is assuming the city where the boxes were disposed of in 1961 put their trash in a landfill, rather than an incinerator.

[jsb]

wonderful video and deep research on the subject, thank you... it's such a pity all this work of Joplin was lost, , , the first opera, the piano concerto, etc. but at least we have some pieces left and some wonderful rag times

[seanmortazyt]

wow, even a piano concerto :(. where's that time machine when you need it...

[rhondacoates]

Treemonisha will be performed in May and June 2023 by Opera Theatre of St Louis (St Louis MO)...The last time it was performed in St Louis MO was in Summer 2000

[Tom-ekgi]

Good video, thank you for talking about this too little known opera. Even if we can't blame the lawyer, the loss of these unpublished manuscrits is a shame. There are a lot of musicians who saw these manuscrits at Lottie Stokes Joplin's home when she was alive and nobody had the idea to encourage her to make them published, or at least to make copies of the manuscripts. For example, Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis interviewed Lottie Stokes Joplin for their famous book "They All Played Ragtime". They saw these manuscripts, they ask a pianist (James P. Johnson) to play them some sheets and they did nothing more with these manuscripts. How can anyone pretend to do a serious work of musicology and completely ignore a treasure like this, I think that all musicologists would dream to discover unpublished music from a famous composer and would hurry to share them.

[zuzannawisniewska]

I never knew Joplin wrote an opera! What a wonderful find.

[arifakyuz]

The music actually sounds like it would fit in an old Hollywood film score. That’s how American it is!

[iks.]

Recently, I really got into your channel, and I very recently decided to check out Treemonisha, and now this video is being shown to me.

[sveinlarsen]

It is about time this wonderful opera gets respect!

[joeyhemlock]

That was super-interesting! Thanks for making this video. I hope that someday I can see this in performance.

[O]

Rick Benjamin said there was one performance in Bayonne NJ of a selection of prices from the opera. The orchestral parts for these might still be out there if the musicians kept them.

[pepep]

Very good and interesting video. It does justice to Scott Joplin. Thanks for uploading.

[snakesnoteyes]

Thank you for helping me discover this