Music: Scott Joplin: From Rags to Opera

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Found beneath a sacred tree, destined to lead her people, the baby girl enters the world like a new Moses. Raised on an Arkansas plantation by the freed slaves Ned and his wife Monisha, she is given the name Treemonisha because she likes to play under the tree. Except for Ned and Monisha, the farm hands are deeply superstitious and tremble when the conjurer Zodzetrick, known as the "goofer dus' man, "comes around with his bags o' luck. Ned and Monisha hope that Treemonisha will grow up to lead the people away from the captivity of their ignorance and fear. Accordingly, in exchange for laundering and woodchopping, they arrange to have the girl educated by a nearby white family. Convinced that Treemonisha's learning is a threat to them, Zodzetrick and his fellow conjurers kidnap her for a night of voodoo-like terror. Rescued by her friend Remus (disguised as a scarecrow), Treemonisha astonishes everyone by urging forgiveness. "You will do evil for evil, if you strike them, you know," she tells her people. They understand and acclaim Treemonisha as their leader.

That is the plot of one of the great curios in all American opera. Treemonisha was composed by the ragtime genius Scott Joplin. Completed in 1911, it was never staged during his lifetime, nor at all until 1972, early on in the current Joplin revival. Last May it was presented by the Houston Grand Opera, with new orchestrations by Composer Gunther Schuller and choreography by Louis Johnson. So successful was the production, directed by Frank Corsaro, that it has been transported intact to Washing ton's Kennedy Center for a three-week run. Later this month it will open on Broadway at the Uris Theatre.

Be it the Broadway musical, operetta or grand opera itself, the musical stage has few works as innocent and pure as Treemonisha. Joplin called his work an opera and structurally it is one. He wrote his own libretto and decked it out with orchestral preludes, choruses, solos, duos, even a quintet, in a way that indicated he probably knew the works of Weber and Flotow. The spirit of the work, though, hovers somewhere between operetta and masque. The use of ragtime is limited to exhilarating dance finales: Aunt Dinah Has Blowed de Horn at the end of Act I and A Real Slow Drag at the final curtain. Elsewhere one can find a waltz and even barbershop quartet. Infusing everything is Joplin's ear for melody, which made his rags so fetching and regaling.

Dramatically, Treemonisha calls for a certain amount of forebearance. Its message (improving the lot of the Negro) is treated naively, and its solution (education) is somewhat simplistic. Treemonisha works for an audience of today because Joplin kept his touch light despite heavy use of dialect ("No, dat bag you'se not gwine to buy, 'cause I know de price is high"). His is a fable that James Thurber might have appreciated.