
Opera Profile: ‘Treemonisha,’ Scott Joplin’s Masterpiece
Scott Joplin’s “Treemonisha” first premiered as a concert read-through in Harlem in 1910, and was not fully staged until 1972, over fifty years after the composer’s death The work, described as “an entirely new form of operatic art,” combines Wagnerian conventions of opera with traditional African-American folk tales and music. Joplin, writer of the score and libretto, may have created {…}