Rarely performed folk opera, Treemonisha, played
By Kristen Guth
Old Gold & Black Reviewer                                                     November 3, 2005

The Secrest Series performance of Scott Joplin’s opera Treemonisha on Oct. 27 in Wait Chapel was well attended by students, faculty and other Winston-Salem residents. 

The three-act opera was presented with energetic stage presence from The Paragon Ragtime Orchestra & Singers and created a beautiful balance between Joplin’s story, words and music, which are all his original work.  As the second Secrest Artists Series event of the year, the ragtime opera centered on the way in which formal education enables individuals to promote goodness in society.  As an auto-biographical reflection of Joplin’s childhood, this theme has equivalent poignancy for the academic setting of the university community.

Joplin published Treemonisha in 1911, consciously constructing the story to parallel his own adolescent education.  As a young boy, Joplin had access to a piano owned by a white household for which his mother worked.  Gradually, he taught himself the musical basics on the piano, leading to his musical career.  The protagonist of Treemonisha likewise acquires an education through her parents’ labors in a white-owned home. 

The Paragon Ragtime Orchestra, an 11-member group, began the program by playing a well-mastered rendition of Joplin’s overture.  The music flowed skillfully from the staff lines on the sheet music down through the performers’ fingers and over the chapel’s balcony, delightfully entrancing the audience with exuberant jazz orchestration.

Although the group was small in number, the accuracy with which each member executed their individual parts contributed to the gorgeous melodic overlays that Joplin initially penned almost a century ago.

The cast and Treemonisha Octette successfully brought together the plot line through powerful voice projection and dance, conveying excellent dramatic emotion overall.  The title role of Treemonisha was sung by Rita Addico-Cohen, whose high voice and impressive command of the stage propelled the opera forward. 

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Scott Joplin opera leaps back to life
Re-creation of ragtime 'Treemonisha' at Stern Grove shows off score's marvels
Joshua Kosman, Chronicle Music Critic
Tuesday, June 24, 2003
Ragtime and opera joined hands and danced together in the most joyous fashion at Stern Grove on Sunday afternoon, with a vigorous and utterly charming performance of Scott Joplin's "Treemonisha."

The only large-scale work to survive from the pen of the greatest of the ragtime composers, "Treemonisha" is still a comparative rarity in performance for reasons that have as much to do with history -- the piece was never performed during Joplin's lifetime, and his original orchestrations have been lost -- as with the opera's intrinsic merits.

Sunday's semi-staged performance did nothing to conceal the dramatic slightness of the piece, which was published in 1911. But the score, superbly led by conductor Rick Benjamin, is a resourceful marvel, a multifarious mixture of straightforward rags and dances, waltzes, sentimental ballads and full-scale arias.

Nothing else Joplin left us suggests a comparable stylistic or expressive range. Although the score is deeply rooted throughout in the syncopated rhythms, harmonies and instrumental sonorities of ragtime, he uses those elements to create set pieces that go far beyond the conventions of the style.

For this performance, Benjamin, an expert on music of the period, unveiled his new arrangement of "Treemonisha" for the 11-piece Paragon Ragtime Orchestra. That lithe, pungent blend of strings, woodwinds and brass -- which Benjamin claimed was the dominant instrumental sound for American theater bands from California to Maine -- gave the performance a lively grace that helped fill the sunny meadow to perfection.

Set among the impoverished black inhabitants of an Arkansas plantation in 1884, "Treemonisha" offers an urgent plea for the importance of education in improving the condition of former slaves.

It pits the 18-year-old title character, the only member of her community to have had any schooling, against the conjurers who prey on people's superstitions by selling them "bags of luck" to ward off evil (although the nature of their wares is unspecified, one conjurer's reference to himself as the "goofer dust man" suggests that he is in the same line of work as, say, Sportin' Life in "Porgy and Bess").

The dramaturgy is relatively perfunctory -- Act 1 is devoted to exposition, Act 2 to the conjurers' kidnapping of Treemonisha and Act 3 to her rescue -- and plenty of time is taken along the way for dances, songs and even a forest ramble in waltz time for eight scary bears that, sadly, was not staged.

But Joplin's ingenuity in expanding his palette to dramatic ends is striking, as in the Act 3 duet for Treemonisha's parents or some of the vocal writing for Treemonisha herself, which combines operatic phrasing with ragtime melodies.

On Sunday, the title role was sung with plenty of flair and assurance by soprano Indira Mahajan, who handled both the high notes and the rhythmic flow of the role splendidly. Soprano Shalanda Bond and bass-baritone Frank Ward made strong contributions as Treemonisha's parents.

Tenor Albert Lee sang sweetly as Remus, the young man who rescues Treemonisha and is rewarded with the opportunity to preach at length to the community (and the audience) on the unremarkable proposition that "wrong is never right." Gene Heard and Courtney Brown were an aptly villainous pair of conjurers, and the chorus, led by Lynne Morrow, sang skillfully.

The afternoon began with orchestral versions of three of Joplin's piano rags, "The Strenuous Life," "Pleasant Moments" and "Elite Syncopations." These were first-rate renditions, marked by rhythmic ---strength and streamlined elegance.

Restoration of Scott Joplin's Treemonisha Receives East Coast Premiere on WFU's Secrest Series

by William Thomas Walker

Wake Forest University's Secrest Artists Series presented the East Coast premiere of a new version of Scott Joplin's folk-opera Treemonisha in Wait Chapel on October 27. In 1896, the composer sought to improve his musical technique and attended the George R. Smith College for Negroes. Afterward, he began to issue, with the publisher John Stark, the numerous piano pieces that earned him the sobriquet "the king of ragtime." Joplin's life-long focus was to elevate to a par with classical music what had been a largely improvised folk genre. Early on, he became obsessed with creating a ragtime opera. He moved to New York from St. Louis in 1907 in order to create and produce his second stage work, Treemonisha, composed in 1908-11 and orchestrated in 1915, but he was unable to find backers or a publisher. At his own expense, he published the piano score and mounted a poorly-received concert performance that used only piano accompaniment. His original orchestration was lost, and the opera had to wait until January 28, 1972 for its premiere, in Atlanta. That version used an orchestration by noted composer T. J. Anderson. Other orchestrations were done by William Bolcom and Gunther Schuller, and DGG issued a recording of the latter. These versions call for fairly large forces, similar to the resources that might be found in traditional European operas.

In New Grove II (online), Andrew Stiller draws attention to the fact that "The identification of ragtime as a pop genre and Joplin as a 'minority' composer has tended to obscure the fact that Treemonisha is the earliest musically significant opera by an American (apart from Gottshalk's one-act Escenas Campestres, 1860), and the earliest in an identifiably modern idiom."

Rick Benjamin's new orchestration reflects a desire to recreate the work using the "regulation" twelve-piece theatre orchestra of the period. Rather than "grand opera," Benjamin sees the work as "an amalgamation of the well-established American traditions of vaudeville, tap shows, melodramas, and minstrelsy, all held together by Joplin's marvelous music."

I frankly found the recording of the Schuller version of Treemonisha rather tame and boring, lacking the snap I remember from his pioneering ragtime orchestra recordings. Benjamin's edition wins hands down, communicating rhythmic verve along with a wide palette of colors and timbres.

Benjamin drew a lively and subtly-balanced performance from his small, skilled ensemble. A string quartet and a double bass are joined by a flute, a clarinet, a trombone, two mellow cornets, a piano, and a remarkable battery of drums and other percussion instruments. Meighan Stoops played her numerous clarinet solos with marvelous breath control and warm tone. Concertmistress Yuko Naito and cellist Jane O'Hara had significant solos in different arias that did much to heighten dramatic impact. Adding considerably to the mix of colors in the ensemble was Leslie Cullen’s doubling on both flute and piccolo. Trombonist Gilles Bernard and Kyle Resnick and C.J. Camerieri, cornets, worked wonders as they played with extraordinary sensitivity, often using very quiet dynamics, rarely encountered in brasses, producing glowing and mellow blended sound that was very special. Most fascinating of all were the magical and quiet, subtle sounds conjured up by percussionist Kerry Meads. He also made a big impact with a small thunder sheet. All twelve musicians played with extraordinarily tight ensemble.

Treemonisha is hardly the only opera that suffers from a weak or tepid libretto. With its conflicts downplayed and its uplifting moral tone, I could not help but think it would be apt for a vacation Bible school. I wonder how well it plays outside the Southern Bible Belt – here, at least, citizens of all races share some common religious culture....

Found crying under a tree, a baby girl named Treemonisha was raised by Monisha and Ned, a childless couple left "in charge" by white owners who had abandoned the plantation after the Civil War ("The Late Unpleasantness"). The opera opens when the educated 18-year-old girl comes into conflict with the colorful Zodzetrick, one of the conjurers who exploit superstitious locals by selling them "Bags of Luck." The conjurers kidnap Treemonisha and plan to throw her into a wasp's nest. She is rescued when her student – and love interest – Remus dresses in a scarecrow's outfit and frightens off the conjurers. The locals capture Zodzerick and are about to thrash him roundly when Treemonisha intervenes, advocating forgiveness.

All the soloists and members of the small chorus had pleasant voices – some were better, still. There was no lack of strong characterization. The most finished voice was the bright high soprano of Rita Addico-Cohen, who portrayed Treemonisha. Her diction was consistently clear and her high notes were on dead center. Miking of the singers sometimes created a "sonic halo" around several soloists and may have muddied their lines. AnnMarie Sandy, as Monisha, has a warm, low mezzo-soprano voice. Baritone Frank Ward, Jr. brought fine comic timing and an infinite variety of facial expression to the roles of Ned and Parson Alltalk; there was more than a little of Don Basilio about the latter. As Remus, Joseph LeBlanc, with a somewhat tight but well-projected tenor voice, gave a winning performance. Combining the grace of a dancer with a stock villain's body language, baritone Edward Pleasant was most entertaining as the conjurer Zodzetrick. Mel LeRoy's solid, well-rounded baritone voice suited the role of Simon, the chief conjurer. Smaller parts were taken by Trevor B. Smith (Andy) and Robert Hughes (Cephus); they also sang in the eight-member chorus.

Four WFU students had roles in the performance: Anna Banerjea created a pleasing choreography for dancers Joan Pharr, Cara Ray, and Jamie Patterson, who, dressed in bear suits, swirled about and pirouetted in the ballet, "Frolic of the Bears.

A variety of slow and fast rags, all delightful, are heard throughout the opera. A ring dance is a highlight of the episode of the Corn Huskers. "Good Advice," which features Parson Alltalk, found the ensemble reacting like a traditionally lively Black church congregation, with calls and witnessing. The musical accompaniment is quite at odds with the "goody-good" pabulum that is Joplin's text. Barber-shop-quartet harmonies, beautifully blended, were prominent in "We Will Rest Awhile," a personal favorite. My ears suddenly heard a familiar Viennese rhythm: I had not considered the possibility of a ragtime waltz. At the end, the entire cast spread across the stage to dance and sing "A Real Slow Drag," led by Addico-Cohen's glowing voice; she is a most winning Treemonisha.

Richard D. Thompson was responsible for the very effective staging and choreography of the opera, aside from the "Frolic" dance, and the simple but functional set was by William P. Muller.