Scott Joplin's Treemonisha [Original Cast Recording]
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CD Details
Performer: Willard WhiteComposer: Scott Joplin
Conductor: Gunther Schuller
Orchestra: Gunther Schuller
Orchestra: Houston Grand Opera Orchestra & Chorus
Performer: Ben Harney
Performer: Betty Allen
Performer: Carmen Balthrop
Performer: Cora Johnson
Performer: Curtis Rayam
Performer: Dorceal Duckens
Performer: Dwight Ransom
Performer: Edward Pierson
Performer: Kenneth Hicks
Performer: Raymond Bazemore
Edition: Music CD
Format: Cast Recording
CD Release Date: 1992-09-15
Music Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
- Treemonisha, opera in 3 acts: Act One: No. 1 Overture
- Treemonisha, opera in 3 acts: Act One: No. 2 The Bag of Luck
- Treemonisha, opera in 3 acts: Act One: No. 3 The Corn Huskers
- Treemonisha, opera in 3 acts: Act One: No. 4 We're Goin' Around
- Treemonisha, opera in 3 acts: Act One: No. 5 The Wreath
- Treemonisha, opera in 3 acts: Act One: No. 6 The Sacred Tree
- Treemonisha, opera in 3 acts: Act One: No. 7 Surprised
- Treemonisha, opera in 3 acts: Act One: No. 8 Treemonisha's Bringing Up
- Treemonisha, opera in 3 acts: Act One: No. 9 Good Advice
- Treemonisha, opera in 3 acts: Act One: No. 10 Confusion
- Treemonisha, opera in 3 acts: Act Two: No. 11 Superstition
- Treemonisha, opera in 3 acts: Act Two: No. 12 Treemonisha in Peril
- Treemonisha, opera in 3 acts: Act Two: No. 13 Frolic of the Bears
- Treemonisha, opera in 3 acts: Act Two: No. 14 The Wasp Nest
- Treemonisha, opera in 3 acts: Act Two: No. 15 The Rescue
- Treemonisha, opera in 3 acts: Act Two: No. 16 We Will Rest Awhile
- Treemonisha, opera in 3 acts: Act Two: No. 17 Going Home
- Treemonisha, opera in 3 acts: Act Two: No. 18 Aunt Dinah Has Blowed the Horn
- Treemonisha, opera in 3 acts: Act Three: No. 19 Prelude
- Treemonisha, opera in 3 acts: Act Three: No. 20 I Want to See My Child
- Treemonisha, opera in 3 acts: Act Three: No. 21 Treemonisha's Return
- Treemonisha, opera in 3 acts: Act Three: No. 22 Wrong is Never Right
- Treemonisha, opera in 3 acts: Act Three: No. 23 Abuse
- Treemonisha, opera in 3 acts: Act Three: No. 24 When Villains Ramble Far and Near
- Treemonisha, opera in 3 acts: Act Three: No. 25 Conjurors Forgiven
- Treemonisha, opera in 3 acts: Act Three: No. 26 We Will Trust You as Our Leader
- Treemonisha, opera in 3 acts: Act Three: No. 27 A Real Slow Drag
Music reviews of Scott Joplin's Treemonisha [Original Cast Recording]
Music Review: Joplin's Treemonisha
Rating: 5 Stars
Scott Joplin (1867/68 -- 1917) was one of the earliest composers with the ambition of combining African-American and classical musical forms. He is best-known for his ragtime compositions for the piano, but he also worked in more ambitious genres. By 1910, Joplin had composed his second opera, "Treemonisha". (The score of an earlier opera, "Guest of Honor" has been lost.) He spent much of the rest of life in an unsuccessful attempt to have Treemonisha staged and performed. The opera lay dormant until the mid-1970s when with the revival of interest in ragtime, Treemonisha was staged and performed by the Houston Lyric Opera Company and received a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1976. Treemonisha was made into a movie and presented on television but, unfortunately, it has again largely faded from public sight. The work receives performances from time to time by music festivals and schools and by small opera companies.
Joplin wrote the libretto as well as the music for Treemonisha. The story is set around 1884 in a rural African American community near Texarkana, Arkansas. (Just before my rehearing of Treemonisha, I passed through Texarkana on the train en route to Dallas.) The story shows Joplin's vision of how rural African Americans could advance after the Civil War by combatting superstition and by hard work, good leadership, and, most of all, a commitment to education. Importantly, Joplin's story teaches the virtue of forgiveness and of not holding grudges.
The heroine of the opera is an 18 year old woman, Treemonisha, who had been found as an infant under a tree and raised as a daughter by Monisha and her husband Ned. Monisha and Ned sent Treemonisha to a white woman for education, as the community had no schools, and Treemonisha returns as the only member of the community who can read and write. As the opera opens, Treemonisha foils the efforts of a conjurer, Zodzetrick, to sell a "bag of luck" to Monisha. In response, the connjurers kidnap Treemonisha and are about to throw her into a wasp nest when she is rescued by a townsman, Remus, disguised as a scarecrow. The conjurers in turn are captured by field workers and taken to the town where at Treemonisha's urging, they are forgiven and released. Treemonisha is acknowledged as the leader of the community and she and Monisha lead the people in a ragtime dance "Marching Onward".
This 2-CD set of "Treemonisha" on Deutsche Gramophon was first released in 1976 with the initial enthusiasm over the opera and reissued in 2005 at a budget price. Gunther Schuller, who orchestrated Joplin's piano score, conducts with Carmen Balthorp singing the role of Treemonisha and Betty Allen singing Monisha.
With its music and storyline, the opera is a mixed success. The most successful numbers are those in which Joplin stays closest to a folk idiom, particularly the finale, "A Real Slow Drag" ("Marching Onward"), the conclusion to Act II, "Aunt Dinah has Blowed de Horn", the Ring Dance "We're Going Around" from Act I, and the number for a well-meaning but shallow itinerant preacher, Parson Alltalk, "Good Advice" from Act I. I thought the Prelude to Act III also worked well as a musical number, while the overture to the entire opera was less successful. Many of the remaining numbers, for Monisha and for male soloists Remus and Ned, seem to be based more closely on European opera. Joplin composed some lovely music in these sections, but they lack the spontaniety and verve of the dances and the more folkish sections of the score.
Treemonisha remains a landmark in American Opera, and Joplin's intended crowning achievement of his career. The opera's vision of uplift and forgiveness remains inspiring, even with the crudeness of the plot. Joplin's life goal of raising African American music to the stature of American classic was realized in part by his opera. An understanding of Treemonisha is essential to understanding Joplin's artistic aims and his achievement. It is fortunate that this recording of Treemonisha is available in this set and on a budget-priced DG set to introduce the listener to Joplin's opera.
Robin Friedman
Description of Scott Joplin's Treemonisha [Original Cast Recording]
Joplin (ca. 1868-1917), whose fame as a composer had skyrocketed in the 1960s and '70s as a result of the "rediscovery" of his rags by Gunther Schuller, Joshua Rifkin, and others, poured his heart and soul into this tale of black sharecroppers and their struggle against ignorance and superstition in late-19th-century Arkansas. Yet he was never able to get the work staged in his lifetime. This recording comes from Treemonisha's belated full-scale staging at Houston Grand Opera in 1975, with a splendid cast headed by Carmen Balthrop, Betty Allen, Curtis Rayam, and Willard White, directed by Frank Corsaro and conducted by Gunther Schuller (who provided the arrangements and the scoring). Joplin's tuneful score is a lively mix of ragtime, minstrel show, vaudeville, grand opera, Wagner, Verdi, and Offenbach, with lots of dancing, a big role for the chorus, and arias and ensembles of affecting simplicity and beauty. Schuller gets an impressively crisp performance from the orchestra, a Dixieland band with added strings and winds, and paces the performance to perfection--for fun, just listen to the Act II-ending chorus "Aunt Dinah has blowed the horn." The recording sounds as fresh and bright as the inspiration that speaks from every page of this all-American score. --Ted LibbeyGeneral CDs
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