TREEMONISHA
The Florida Premiere of America’s “Forgotten Opera”
“Mamma is always right…”
Considered by many to be America’s first pop star, Scott Joplin’s immortal piano solo “The Entertainer” lives rent-free in our collective consciousness thanks not only to its now ubiquitous presence in film but also, more importantly, to its iconic and catchy opening lines. And yet, much of Scott Joplin’s music and work was lost after his death, including his equally tuneful and iconic opera Treemonisha, which was not fully produced until over 50 years after his death.
Scott Joplin was raised in a musical family of railway laborers in Texarkana, Texas. During the late 1880s, he traveled the American South as a musician, and in 1893, he went to Chicago for the World's Fair, which helped make ragtime a national craze by 1897. His "Maple Leaf Rag" in 1899 brought him fame and a steady income, which led him to move to St. Louis, where he scored his first opera, A Guest of Honor. In 1907, Joplin moved to New York City to hopefully find a producer for a new opera, Treemonisha. Unable to find a publisher, Joplin undertook the financial burden of publishing Treemonisha himself in piano-vocal format, and in 1915, as a last-ditch effort to see it performed, he invited a small audience to hear it at a rehearsal hall in Harlem. Joplin died shortly after in 1917, marking the end of the ragtime era, and Treemonisha was “forgotten” until the 1970s when Joplin's music was rediscovered and returned to popularity with the release of a million-selling album recorded by Joshua Rifkin. This was followed by the Academy Award–winning 1973 film The Sting, which featured several of Joplin's compositions, including “The Entertainer.” The score to Treemonisha was also rediscovered at this time with some of Joplin’s orchestration sketches. Excerpts from the opera were performed in 1971 at New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and the work was presented in its entirety in 1972 as a concert performance in Atlanta, Georgia by the Afro-American Music Workshop of Morehouse College and the Atlanta Symphony under conductor Robert Shaw. It was staged and choreographed by dancer and director Katherine Dunham and was orchestrated by scholar Dr. T.J. Anderson. The opera was fully produced for the first time in 1975 by Houston Grand Opera with soprano Carmen Balthrop, who had just won the top prize in the New York Metropolitan Opera's National Council Auditions, singing the title role. That production, orchestrated by Gunther Schuller, moved on to a Broadway production in 1976, where it played six previews and 54 performances at the Uris Theatre, which led to Scott Joplin being awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for the work.
Treemonisha is often considered America’s first opera and features a tuneful score with a lively mix of ragtime, vaudeville, folk music, and grand opera. The work was truly ahead of its time with a similar work in terms of style and story Gershwin’s Porgy and Besscoming 25 years later in 1935. It is also the only opera in existence about the Reconstruction Era African-American experience in which Scott Joplin himself lived and breathed.
We are humbled and honored to present the Florida premiere of Treemonisha and be a small part of its amazing and significant legacy in American opera. It is a work that has been on our mind for some time, and with the support of key partners such as the ZORA! Festival, the Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community, and Bethune-Cookman University, we knew the time was right. The production was further enhanced and guided by the support of local opera legend Curtis Rayam, who has served as an advisor on the production and who was the original Remus for the World Premiere of Treemonisha at Houston Grand Opera. Curtis himself said, “My Momma always told me we should bring Treemonisha to Florida, and now we finally are.” Well, what Momma says is always right!
Gabriel Preisser, general director for Opera Orlando
American tenor Curtis Rayam, a native of the Orlando area, began his musical journey at Jones High School before pursuing vocal studies with Mary Henderson Buckley at the University of Miami. He was named a finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in 1972 and won the Dallas Opera Competition in 1974. Mr. Rayam made his professional debut in 1971 with the Miami Opera in Puccini’s Manon Lescaut. He went on to appear in Dallas, Houston, and Jackson Opera/South. He established a national reputation with the Houston Grand Opera in the role of Remus in Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha, which was recorded on Deutsche Grammophon. He made his European debut at the Wexford Festival in 1976 in Giovanna d'Arco by Verdi, returning as the Sultan in Mozart's Zaide and as Wilhelm Meister in Thomas' Mignon. He appeared in Boston in 1979 as Olympion in the USA premiere of Tippett's The Ice Break conducted by Sarah Caldwell, and in Amsterdam in 1981 as Massenet's Werther. In 1984, he rose to international prominence when he substituted for the ailing Luciano Pavarotti and sang the title role of Idomeneo to critical acclaim. He had further engagements at Salzburg, Paris, Frankfurt, and Venice; La Scala in 1985 in George Frideric Handel's Alcina, returning in 1988 as Orcane in Fetonte by Jommelli; Spoleto in 1988 as Creon in Traetta's Antigone. In a 1986 PBS broadcast, he performed in Berlioz’ The Damnation of Faust with the Philadelphia Opera. In 1992, celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German Consulate invited Curtis Rayam, soprano Benita Valente, mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves, and counter-tenor Jeffrey Gall as guest soloists in G.F. Handel’s Messiah at the John F. Kennedy Center.
In 1997, Curtis Rayam returned home to Florida and joined the music faculty of Bethune-Cookman University. He continued to perform in the USA and abroad, while remaining active in both church and community affairs. He sits on the Board of Directors for the Choral Society of Winter Park at Rollins College, where he teaches voice as an adjunct professor. Rayam is a member of the National Opera Association, completing two consecutive terms on the Board of Directors, and chairs its national voice competition--scholarship division. He is a founding member of the Negro Spiritual Scholarship Foundation, where he is a patron namesake for its Grady/Rayam Prize. This foundation has awarded more than $100,000 in scholarships to high school students. Rayam is an honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity and a National Arts Associate of Sigma Alpha Iota, International Music Fraternity.
Enjoy watching the 1975 world premiere production of Treemonisha below produced by Houston Grand Opera featuring Curtis Rayam as Remus.