In 1917, six years after copyrighting the opera, Joplin died, destitute, buried in an unmarked grave with two strangers. And it really-it wasn’t something that achieved success during his own lifetime,” said Benjamin. “It’s a work that has had a very troubled history. Joplin was forced to print the music himself then cast it too.ĭespite his efforts, Joplin never saw a major production. But despite his ragtime acclaim, publishers rejected the opera. Louis rooming house, finishing it in a Manhattan apartment that’s now a hotel. ![]() Joplin is thought to have started writing in a St. The community is superstitious, taken with “conjuring.” But a young Black girl, found under a tree by a childless couple and then educated by a white family, leads her neighbors out of their waywardness, becoming their teacher and leader. After the Civil War ended, whites left the plantation, leaving the remaining freed slaves “in dense ignorance,” as Joplin puts it in language that some may find offputting today. ![]() The opera is set on a plantation near the Red River “somewhere in the State of Arkansas,” as Joplin writes in a detailed preface. ![]() “That in and of itself makes it an amazing document.” “It’s the only expression of African-American life in the Reconstruction Era that exists - that’s created by someone who lived through that time period, actually experienced it,” said Rick Benjamin, founder and director of the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra, who wrote a companion book to his orchestra’s recording of “Treemonisha.” It’s been called the nation’s first true opera. He based the story on what he witnessed himself-a childhood shortly after the Civil War, in an area of Texas not far from the borders of Louisiana and Arkansas.
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