> > excerpt - In 1972 the opera Treemonisha had its long-delayed premiere at > Morehouse College in Atlanta, followed by a larger production at Houston > Opera in 1975 that helped Joplin win a posthumous Pulitzer Prize the next > year. The success of the 1973 Oscar-winning film *The Sting*, which put > Joplin’s irresistible 1902 ragtime number “The Entertainer” on the > Billboard charts, further secured his new acclaim. *Treemonisha*, > however, never established itself as a standard in the operatic repertory, > and this year’s Washington production is the latest to make a powerful case > for this strange, beautiful, pioneering, and still neglected work. > As a boy in Texarkana, Joplin was given free piano lessons by a German > Jewish immigrant named Julius Weiss, who introduced the young musician to > European classical music. When *The American Musician and Art Journal* > reported > on Joplin’s ragtime pieces in 1907, it noted that “he is delighted with > Beethoven and Bach, and his compositions, though syncopated, smack of the > higher cult.” Four years later the journal, evaluating the score of > *Treemonisha*, compared Joplin to the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák, who > also drew on Black spiritual music and American folk rhythms for the New > World Symphony (1893). One might even consider *Treemonisha* in relation > to Bedřich Smetana’s *The Bartered Bride*, which uses folkloric musical > forms to animate a comedy of peasant village life. Composed in the 1860s, > Smetana’s Czech folk opera had its first US performance at the Chicago > World’s Fair in 1893, where Joplin was also present for musical > performances of his own: it was probably here that ragtime music first > found a broad public. full - > *https://portside.org/2026-05-17/opera-ragged-times > <https://portside.org/2026-05-17/opera-ragged-times>* >
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