In May 1911, Scott Joplin published, at his own expense, the vocal score of his opera, Treemonisha—a venture quixotic, visionary, and obsessive. Unable to secure backing for its production, Joplin eventually rehearsed a cast, rented a hall in Harlem, and accompanying on piano, presented a single concert performance of Treemonisha in 1915, to incomprehension and derision. Disappointment broke him, while the ravages of syphilis brought on periods of deepening melancholy and dementia.

Sung in a foreign language, Treemonisha could become a repertory item. In English, Joplin's libretto is chock-full of redundancies, miscalculations, and embarrassing puerilities. Treemonisha's father, rejecting a conjuror's "bag o' luck," utters this immortal poeticism as the music soars:

It may be worth it's [sic] weight in diamonds rare,

Or worth the earth to you.

But to me, it aint [sic] worth a possom's [sic] hair,

Or persimmons when they're new

Despite these verbal plunges, the score looms as dramatic music of a high order. The captivating overture is overlong, as is Monisha's ballad describing how the infant Treemonisha was discovered beneath a tree. Joplin resorts too often to the dominant seventh for dramatic tension. His prosody often highlights inessential words (confirming that he knew exactly what he wanted musically). His command of satire is shaky, Parson Alltalk (never addressed by name) conducts a prayer meeting whose rapt hymnody would not be out of place at a Southern Baptist revival. Nonetheless, his episodes are well paced and studded with numerous coups de théâtre: the surreally waltzing Frolic of the Bears ("Enter eight bears. Bears begin frolicking."), the incandescent ragtime dance We're Go'in Around, and above all, the mysterious, powerful final number A Real Slow Drag. Time and again, Joplin's music evokes an archetypal vision of rural Eden (Superstition, We Will Rest Awhile, Aunt Dinah Has Blowed the Horn), though not without its serpents. While his idiom owes far more to the popular music of his day than to European models, he molds it with great suppleness and operatic amplitude, nowhere more splendidly than in the extended, riveting finale of Act Three. It is an American classic, flawed but indispensable.

The vocal score was republished in 1971—Joplin's orchestration is lost—and the work's belated premiere was given January 28, 1972, in Atlanta by the music department of Morehouse College, with Robert Shaw conducting the Atlanta Symphony in an orchestral arrangement by T.J. Anderson. For a lavish Houston Grand Opera production in May 1975, Gunther Schuller prepared his own recension of the score—subsequently recorded by Deutsche Grammophon—which played on Broadway that year to enthusiastic audiences for a run of nine weeks.

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