Treemonisha (Photo: Dahlia Katz)
Both as a story and as a work of art, Scott Joplin’s opera Treemonisha is all about resilience and growth.
Set in a former plantation in Texas, the opera follows its title character, a young freedwoman, as her education empowers her to lead her community to greater self-sufficiency.
But the story behind the opera is one of growth, too. Completed in 1910 by Black ragtime composer Scott Joplin, the opera never received a full performance during the composer’s lifetime. In fact, it would be 55 years after his death that it received a world premiere. The performance won Joplin the Pulitzer, but the score was incomplete — Joplin depleted his savings to have a piano score of the work published.
A reimagining of Joplin’s opera comes to Chicago on May 2-4 in a presentation at the Harris Theater. From a reworked libretto by Leah-Simone Bowe, composers Jessie Montgomery and Jannina Norpoth teamed up to set Joplin’s piano score — and add some additional Joplin music — for a unique orchestration featuring string orchestra and African instruments. And from a story standpoint, this version maintains a similar arc, but offers a reimagined setting and narrative, all while empowering the title character.
WFMT spoke with Jannina Norpoth, an accomplished violinist, arranger, and composer, about the production ahead of its run at Harris.
WFMT: How does this reimagining differ from the original?
Jannina Norpoth: The departure is the new libretto and creating the sounds that tell the story of this new libretto. This African community within the story, the Maroons, that were escaped slaves, based on a real community. They preserved a lot more of their African traditions and were successfully able to stay hidden in the swamps of the United States. Because they were so great at staying hidden, there’s not a lot of written history of them, so we had to sort of imagine.
Jannina Norpoth (Photo: Laura Isé)
The idea came from our librettist, Leah-Simone Bowe; she brought this new storyline to the opera. As arrangers, our job was to imagine musically what that sounds like. How do we paint a picture of this community with music?
The characters are mostly the same. The plot and the general intention of the opera are very similar. We have this protagonist Treemonisha, who brings these two communities together. At the end of the opera, she becomes a leader.
The way we get there in this opera is different. In the original opera, there’s this character called Zodzetrick who is a bride-seller. He kidnaps Treemonisha. He’s this evil man: selling women, selling fake things, ripping people off. In our opera, he’s named Zodzerick, and instead of him being a villain, he’s a medicine man. The communities have their interactions, but they look down on each other.
Treemonisha finds out on her wedding day that she is adopted. She’s actually Maroon. She’s been brought up in the freedmen community believing all these things about the Maroon community and she feels totally conflicted, and she runs away. She meets Zodzerick in the woods and he takes her to his community so she can learn about herself.
We’ve truly made Treemonisha the heroine. She doesn’t need a man to save her. She does everything herself. In the original opera, even though it’s named for her, she doesn’t really sing. I don’t even think she has her own aria in the original. So we also meant to really feature her a lot more in her own opera.
WFMT: What was it like adapting a piano score for a larger-scale ensemble?
Norpoth: Scott Joplin used his life savings to register the piano vocal score with the Library of Congress. So we have the blueprint. But we had to imagine what that should sound like for an orchestra. There was an orchestral score at some point, but it did not survive.
A mural of composer Scott Joplin (Photo: Steve Snodgrass, CC BY 2.0, image cropped)
At first we took the most traditional approach to it in creating orchestral arrangements around the original songs. Once we found a sound that we liked that we felt embodied the Joplin, then we started to ask ourselves where we could depart from that. At different points, we also took songs and made them recurring leitmotifs. There’s a Joplin art song called “A Picture of Her Face” that we repurposed.
We added African instruments. The kora was first. It’s such a versatile, beautiful instrument. The kora is not chromatic, so you’re putting it into a chromatic context of these western instruments. Do we need to shift keys to match the kora? Do we just want to put chords in or do we want to write out melodies? That was a really great learning experience for the two of us.
We have this African improvising ensemble and then a more traditional chamber ensemble. The all-Black ensemble includes a string quintet, clarinet, trumpet, percussion, in addition to the improvising ensemble of Kora, African percussion, and a little bit of banjo as well. They are onstage; we wanted the orchestral ensemble to also represent the cast and the characters of the opera.
Because Joplin’s music grew out of the juxtaposition of both African and American folk music — the rhythms, the banjo is an African instrument brought to America — you hear all those influences. You’re hearing the connection within the lineage of music.
WFMT: Why does this story resonate for you?
Norpoth: At this point in America, we’re having this identity crisis of who we are as a nation and confronting our history, which is very painful. That’s another reason that this opera is important, it’s painting an authentic picture of Reconstruction.
As a biracial person, myself, I’ve had to go through that journey of “Who am I?”
I am African American, Native American, and Jewish. My family was slaves in Mississippi, I have relatives who survived the Holocaust. And then the Choctaw native American side of my family married into the Black family who survived slavery — in fact, my family in Mississippi, my Grandmother grew up in a town very much like the town that Treemonisha grew up in. It was a post-slavery community. My family was the only Black family in Mississippi to own a cotton gin. On the Native American side, they married into that Black family. That saved them from being deported to Oklahoma.
I think there’s a lot of parallels in Treemonisha’s story. That’s where it resonated with me as I’ve seen it, as I’ve worked on it, as I’ve learned about Joplin’s story and music, working on this opera for so many years.
WFMT: After all this time, how does it feel to be presenting this opera live?
Norpoth: It’s really amazing. It was really emotional for me to see it onstage when it opened in Toronto.
It’s a gorgeous production. After working on it for so long, it is amazing to see it come together on stage with all the incredible costumes, scenery, and dancing. The choreographer, Esie Mensah, is absolutely incredible. There’s this beautiful integration of both African dance and African American dance within the opera. It’s staged really beautifully, and the cast is really incredible; not just incredible musicians but incredible people as well.
This time, I’m actually part of the orchestra. I wanted to be a part of it because I love the music, but also because I love the musicians who are a part of it so much. It just felt like something that would be a full-circle moment, to be writing this opera and then get to perform it.
Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha — A Musical Reimagining will take place at the Harris Theater from May 2 to May 4. For ticketing and information, visit harristheaterchicago.org.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
