Love thy Neighbor - Opera Orlando’s “Treemonisha”

On May 18th I saw Opera Orlando’s production of Scott Joplin’s 1910 opera Treemonisha.  I was really looking forward to it after it was announced because “Scott Joplin wrote an opera?!?!”

Spoiler: I thought it was really good.  The music is fantastic, the themes are compelling, and this production in specific had performances and stagecraft that were top notch.  It was also a really fun experience, something that I don’t get to say too often about non-comic opera.  Nobody dies!

Treemonisha does not get performed very often.  The opera itself was lost for decades before being rediscovered in the 1970s and this relative obscurity is one of the reasons I wanted to write about it.  The Opera Orlando production was Treemonisha’s Florida premier.

Background

Scott Joplin

Scott Joplin (1868-1917) was an American composer dubbed the King of Ragtime.  If you don't know any of Joplin's music... yes, you do.  “The Entertainer” and “Maple Leaf Rag” have permeated casual pop consciousness and are kind of the go-to’s for ragtime representation.

Joplin was born in Texas in the Reconstruction Era.  He learned some music from his family and then studied with professor Julius Weiss from ages 11 to 16 where he was introduced to Western classical and opera.  He became a traveling musician, wrote a lot of music, and moved to New York City in 1907 in the hopes of selling his operas.  He died in poverty in 1917.

I was embarrassingly old before I realized out that Joplin was black.  And this wasn’t a blank spot for just me; I did an unofficial poll of music inclined friends who knew some of his music and went 0 for 4.  It’s theoretically bewildering given Ragtime’s roots in African-American music, but probably not bewildering practically.   There’s definitely a conversation to be had about appropriation and default-ism, where people are just assumed to be white, even when it kind of doesn’t make sense.

I wonder if some of that is because, at least for me, my exposure to ragtime in media involved it being played by white people, whether it was the background saloon music to a scene of white people in Tombstone (1993), or the entire soundtrack to the Paul Newman / Robert Redford crime caper The Sting (1973), or the basis of the extremely white film Alexander’s Ragtime Band (1938).

(And the Irving Berlin song that last film takes its name from has plagiarism accusations, with Joplin’s widow claiming it was stolen from Scott Joplin in the period where Joplin was trying to shop Treemonisha around.)

Treemonisha - A (Very) Brief History

Per an essay in the show program:

Treemonisha is often considered America’s first opera featuring a score filled with a lively mix of ragtime, vaudeville, folk music, and grand opera. The work was ahead of its time with a similar work in terms of style and story Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess premiering nearly 25 years later in 1935. It is also the only opera in existence about the African-American experience during the Reconstruction Era, in which Scott Joplin himself lived.

Joplin wrote both the score and libretto to Treemonisha in 1910 and published a vocal / piano score in 1911.  It was then lost until 1970 and was performed in full for the first time in 1972 by the Atlanta Symphony and Morehouse College.  The Houston Grand Opera performed it in 1976 and this version was recorded by Deutsche Grammophone.

Only the piano-vocal score was discovered and per IMSLP:

Joplin's original orchestration is lost. The opera has been performed only in orchestrations prepared by others long after the composer's death. Those of Thomas J. Anderson, Gunther Schuller and Rick Benjamin are the ones most often performed today

Joplin was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Treemonisha in 1976.

Plot Synopsis

The opera is set in the Reconstruction era South and features an all black cast.  It begins with the conjurer Zodzetrick trying to sell his bags of luck to Monisha and Ned.  Zodzetrick leaves after Monisha and Ned’s daughter Treemonisha chides him for preying on their community’s superstitions.   Treemonisha learns from Monisha that she is not Monisha and Ned’s biological daughter and was found under a sacred tree.

Parson Alltalk arrives and after delivering a charismatic sermon of sorts, the townsfolk learn that the conjurers have kidnapped Treemonisha.  The men of the community go off to free her while her friend Remus devises a plan to frighten the superstitious conjurers by dressing like a scarecrow.

The conjurers sing about punishing Treemonisha for telling the community not to buy their bags of luck.  Remus arrives and scares them off.  After Treemonisha is reunited with her parents, the townsfolk return with the head conjurers.  The townsfolk plan to punish them but Treemonisha pleads for them to be forgiven and released.  She convinces the townsfolk to let the conjurers go and then she is chosen to lead the community.   

The end.

Opera Orlando Production

Disclaimer – The production I saw was heavily cut down to 70 minutes, about half the length of the original staging.  My understanding is that the opera as written has a lot of repetition in it which this production excised.  I can't speak to how much else was cut, as I obviously didn't know the opera at all before seeing this production.  Any comment on the plot or structure is going to necessarily be for the version I saw, and may or may not be reflective of the libretto as written by Joplin.

Cast

Production Team

The Music

Stage director Roberta Emerson and conductor Everett McCorvey described this production's music as a chamber arrangement of Joplin's score.  It was orchestrated by Johnie Dean specifically for this production.   (I'm like 90% sure i linked the correct Johnie Dean above, given the spelling of his first name and the fact that he, like McCorvey, is out of Lexington, KY.)  Scenic Designer Grant Preisser told me that the chamber orchestration was built up from Joplin's piano / vocal score, rather than cut down from one of the pre-existing full ensemble orchestrations.

The music wasn't really what I was expecting from someone dubbed the King of Ragtime.  A lot of the music, especially the arias, had pretty conventional operatic textures.  It wasn't, for lack of a better phrase, a Jukebox Opera where opera singers belted out over ragtime tunes.  Other than the piano being more prominent than in most operas I've seen, musically speaking the conventional stuff generally sounded like a late 19th Century European opera.   

The conventional material roughly alternated with ensemble numbers that I'd call more “communal."  These parts definitely felt more uniquely American and weaved in different genres like spirituals, work songs, and tunes that evoked an exuberant, charismatic church service.  The closing song of the opera, the fantastic "A Real Slow Drag," was the only one that jumped out at me as obviously a ragtime tune.  (Not to say there weren't others but "Slow Drag" was the only one I really locked into at the time.)

It was a big, active ensemble that pulled the crowd in and this in combination with the thrust staging that I'll get to in a minute blurred the line between spectator and participant.   The audience was really into it, clapping along and even doing some foot stomping.  (Though, for God's sake white people: clap on the 2 and 4 not the 1 and 3.)  I heard that the Saturday night crowd was the most ruckus of the weekend.  (In a good way.)

I listened to some of the Gunther Schuller orchestration from the 1976 Houston production and I must say that I massively prefer the Dean chamber orchestration that I saw.  Schuller’s music is lovely and all but has a completely different vibe and sounds really tame by comparison.  The prominence of the on stage piano in the Opera Orlando production and the sheer drive and energy of the communal numbers, in addition to being really engaging, supported the messaging of the opera more effectively, in my opinion.

The Staging

"Treemonisha's" Thrust stage

As I said above the set was in a thrust configuration, where the active space, well, "thrusts" out into the audience who are seated on three sides of the stage.  The actors entered and exited from the audience and were frequently in or near the crowd.

They were really interactive, too, and this is part of what made it feel like such a communal work and the interactivity reinforced the themes of the opera.  The crowd was treated as if they were diegetically present; they weren't behind the fourth wall watching, they were having the same day as the characters.

And it did feel like the characters, even the ensemble, were going about their day, not just showing up to hit marks and then dutifully piss off when the main characters were talking.  A nice moment was when one of the women in the ensemble did a pretty impressive dance move and one of the men standing near me said something like "I didn't know you could move like that, damn!" and was immediately scolded by an older matriarch.  This wouldn't have been audible to anyone on the other side of the stage and I like that they bothered with those little details that I presume were happening everywhere in the theater.

I was sitting in the front row off the the side right near one of the main entrance / egress points so not only did I get a lot of interaction but I was also apparently very visible to everyone else in the crowd.  I had three random people comment after the show that I was right in the thick of it.  There was a funny moment where Thando Mamba, who I've met a few times, ended up right in front of me.  We made eye contact and he grinned and gave me a nod, and then I had this crisis of "Am I making this weird?  How long is an acceptable eye contact in this scenario?"  I didn't want him to feel awkward or obligated to keep looking at me so I looked away, feeling like a doofus.

(Thando is a good dude, btw.  And a great singer.)

I also very much liked that the musicians were tucked into the set on stage rather than being put back out of sight in the wings.  The set looked like it was built around them and it was not only pretty cool to be able to see them playing, but also to have it feel like they were characters themselves.  In a work like this it really was perfect.  (Also, it was awesome to see McCorvey clearly enjoying himself and singing along while conducting.)

Ensemble

The ensemble had a lot to do in this one.  They were on stage for most of the show and everyone did a lot of dancing.  There were a few featured dancers that did the more balletic moves but, especially since everyone on stage was singing and even the non featured dancing was pretty impressive, sometimes it was hard to tell who the featured dancers were.  My rule was if a leg went higher than parallel to the ground, they were probably a dancer first.

An actor in front of me at the end of the Real Slow Drag finale punctuated the final beat by  leaping into the air and landing in a split, which was, bluntly, really badass.  I think I pulled a muscle just watching and apparently the rest of the cast didn't know he was going to do it.

I really can't overstate how great the ensemble was and how well the staging, blocking, and choreography came together.  In the big numbers there were more than 20 people on stage dancing and singing.

Plot. Theme, Structure

Treemonisha is structured a little... unexpectedly.  There are plot elements that function a little strangely in the context of a continuous story, like pointed set ups whose payoffs don't quite materialize or payoffs that seem insufficiently set up.

For example during the inciting incident of the drama, Treemonisha's kidnapping, the head conjurer Zodzetrick says they grabbed her because:

She's been tellin' de people dat dey should throw away their bags o' luck.Now, how are you goin' to get food to eat,When you can't sell yo' bags o' luck?

But...we didn't see her do any of that.  We only saw her tell the conjurer he's spreading superstitions and upsetting people and that he should stop.  She doesn't even do it in front of the ensemble, if I recall correctly.  It's not a big deal, but it's a little bit weird that the libretto  doesn't have her actually do the thing the conjurer is upset about.   (I checked the full libretto too, and it east there either so this wasn’t a case of this production excising some connective tissue.)

I suppose Zodzetrick could be lying to his fellow conjurers to justify the kidnapping post facto, but it isn't framed like that and opera really isn't super well equipped to deal with that kind of subtextual nuance.

Joplin's libretto has gotten criticism over the years.  In Eric Salzman's 1976 review of the Deutsche Grammaphone recording, dug up and shared by Opera Orlando, Salzman mentions how people criticize of "the weakness of the libretto" and himself says it "is a real problem."   BUT, Salzman also says "Still, it's only a libretto; there have been worse" and "For that music, everything, but everything is forgiven."   In opera, after all, the music is the primary deliverer of drama and emotionality, not the libretto and it's no wonder opera's are credited to their composers.

I would say that Treemonisha at times it feels more like a revue than a story with a linear plot and it's probably better to look at it thematically rather than...um... "plot-ily."  Looking at the libretto through that lens means stuff like the big emotional scene where Treemonisha finds out that Ned and Monisha aren't her biological parents, which doesn't have  any obvious plot significance, doesn't feel like a cul-de-sac because its found family significance ties into the show's emphasis on community and people looking out for each other.

To me the opera's de-emphasized and kind of scattered plot heightened the focus on the themes and ideas of the work, in a way that a more rigidly plotted story wouldn't.  So in a way, the plot being less rigidly coherent trained me not to worry very much about the details of the plot and focus on the overarching meaning.

Also, as an aside, you can tell from the above conjurer quote that the libretto was written in dialect.  Honestly, I didn't notice it when I was listening and it wasn't hard to parse the way an eye-dialect can be on the page.  (If you've read Magwich's Cockney in Great  Expectations or Caleb's sometimes inscrutable monologs in The Bride of Lammermoor, you definitely know what I mean.)

Treemonisha, herself

Taylor-Alexis Dupont's performance as Treemonisha was impressive throughout.  Her singing in “We Will Trust You As Our Leader” near the end of the show was a standout example. She had some really long sustained notes where she was both very high yet still light and being able to hit those without belting is quite a vocal control flex.  The intimate staging also meant I could see details of her acting performance as well and she was great there, too.  The fear in her eyes when the conjurers had her, her tenderness with her parents, just all of it was very convincing.

Going back to the unusual dramatic structure, our title character doesn’t really do a whole lot, so for a lot of the show Treemonisha seems like a first-among-equals character, given how many lines Ned, Remus, and especially Monisha have.  But she does become more than just the “object of jeopardy” character and she turns into the opera’s moral center by by convincing the community to forgive the conjurers and resolving / defusing the climactic confrontation. This action has extra weight given Treemonisha herself is the character most wronged and threatened by Zodzetrick and company.

“Wrong is never right” - Forgiveness and Reconciliation

The explicit emphasis on forgiveness is more than just a means of personal reconciliation, it’s about breaking cycles.  After the townsfolk capture the conjurers, they sing “Punish them! Punish them!” while describing the impending retributive violence they want to inflict.  This is a direct echo of the earlier scene when the conjurers sing about how they must punish Treemonisha.

And the community signals its willingness to embrace Treemonisha’s talk of reconciliation as a way forward rather than a single exceptional event by choosing Treemonisha to lead them from now on.  The old way wasn’t working, and as Treemonisha says:

The ignorant too long have ruled,I don't see why they should.And all the people they have fooled,Because the found they could.

Stage director Roberta Emerson, when asked what is one thing she hoped the audience gets out of this production, said simply “Love thy neighbor.”  Especially in a time when people seem pretty eager to litigate away who is a neighbor so they can avoid that pesky commandment from their Lord and Savior, that sentiment, so intrinsic to the opera itself, hit pretty hard.

Treemonisha believes we can do better and that we should try:

For ignorance is criminalIn this enlightened day.

Leadership

One last thing I want to mention is the moment when Treemonisha, after the community asks her to lead them, says:

If I give advice to the women

Who will give advice to the men?

The men in the crowd looked each other sort of incredulously and then simply sang “You.”  They gave the operatic equivalent of a “Duh.”

I’d say that is pretty progressive and daring for for an opera written by a man in 1910 but ::gestures around me::

Gallimaufry

• I mentioned Dupont's performance earlier; do not take that as a slight on anyone I didn't specifically mention.  All the performances were excellent.

• Treemonisha was found under a sacred tree.  This doesn’t really affect anything in the story but might be a Wagner reference.  I don’t really have a larger point here, but I suppose that would be an indicator that Joplin was not screwing around and was going for elevated art on par with serious European opera.

• This production was in partnership with Bethune-Cookman, an HBCU in Daytona, and several members of the ensemble were students from there, which is pretty cool.

• I know I said the 1976 orchestration suffered by comparison to the chamber orchestration, but it’s worth emphasizing that the Schuller version is a really important piece of Treemonisha’s resurrection story that we should all be grateful for.  And it does sound good.

• The pastor character, played by Thando Mamba, is named Parson Alltalk.  I was expecting this to be more of an ironic or satirical name like a Dr. Pangloss in Candide.  But all told he seemed alright, and though the message of forgiveness probably should have come from him he wasn’t a raging hypocrite or anything.  I was expecting a far more pointed critique of hypocrisy given his name, like he was going to enthusiastically lead the charge to punishing the conjurers in opposition to his earlier exhortation before the kidnapping “Don't harm yo' brother, Don't harm yo' sister; Does yer love all yo' neighbors too?”  But he didn’t.  Alltalk is present during the “punish them” scene, but is not focused on. Thando played him a little chastened after Treemonisha’s speech, like he realized he should have spoken up, but he didn’t have any lines.  (The full libretto seems to be like this, too)

• I used the term “townsfolk” in my synopsis which might not be denotationally accurate to the libretto as the community’s setup is a little fuzzy, but the Opera Orlando production was set in Eatonville, FL so I skate by on a technicality.  (Eatonville is a historically black town just North of Orlando where Zora Neale Hurston lived.)

• Near the end Ned sings these lines:

We stay close at home,When villains rambling we can hear,We have no chance to roam,When heartless villains are so near.

We dare not sleep at night,When we have an awful fear.We keep a brilliant light,When villains ramble far and near.

The immediate context of this is that they are talking about the conjurers, but it’s hard not to imagine how this sentiment might resonate with African Americans in the Reconstruction era, or the era of the Klu Klux Klan, or of green books and sundown towns, or Forsythe, or Wilmington, or Tulsa, or Ferguson, or, or, or…

Conclusion

I’m glad that I saw this production.  Treemonisha is a valuable piece of art in its own right but I also applaud and am kind of awed at all the hard work of so many people across the decades to resurrect it.  Probably not surprisingly given my Lazarus Music Project, I have a deep sadness about people’s art being lost to time.  That the vicissitudes of history, culture, and chance nearly erased a work by Scott freaking Joplin really fills me with a kind of artistic existential dread, but it’s inspiring to see what a community of people can do together.   

At the pre show talk, Conductor Everett McCorvey said “It’s our mission to make sure that opera companies know about this production and get it performed in other places.”   Fingers crossed and thank you all.  May this one cement itself far, far from the brink.

March onward, march to that lovely tune.  Slide onward, listen to that rag. Hop and skip and do that slow drag.

- m