Joplin opera to get new sound, performance

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) An opera composed by ragtime musician Scott Joplin decades ago and first staged more than 25 years ago is about to get a whole new sound.

Treemonisha, which was composed by Joplin in 1911 and first performed by the Houston Grand Opera in 1975, is scheduled to be performed Sunday at the Stern Grove Festival.

But the new production will not sound like the Houston version. Joplin's original orchestral score was lost, and conductor Rick Benjamin has written a new version based on the composer's surviving piano-vocal score.

``We want to do it exactly as we think he would have done it in 1911 on tour,'' said Benjamin, who composed his score for a 12-piece theater pit orchestra like the ones used in Joplin's day.

The Houston version, by contrast, was composed by conductor Gunther Schuller for a full orchestra. Well-received by many critics, that version played on Broadway for two months in 1975.

But Benjamin, who lives in Pennsylvania and lectures on music at Bucknell University, said he believes his new version better reflects the style of Joplin's era.

``I would like to hear it as turn-of-the-century American music,'' Benjamin said.

Set on an Arkansas plantation in 1884, Treemonisha tells the story of a young black woman who teaches former slaves about the power of education.

Benjamin said the opera was not staged in Joplin's lifetime, probably because the music world did not want to produce a work by an African-American saloon pianist, especially one dealing with themes that were then controversial.

``What he was trying to do was inconsistent with stereotypes of black people,'' Benjamin said. ``Nobody would've gone near it.''

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)