It was one of the extraordinary opera evenings this year with my first meeting with Scott Joplin´s (1868-1917) opera TREEMONISHA.

In the leading roles we had some pearls, Adina Aaron in the titelrole as Treemonisha.  Closely followed by the productions two world famous operastars, Grace Bumbry as her mother Monisha and Willard White as her father Ned.  As her boyfriend Remus, we very much enjoyed Stanley Jackson, an outstanding tenor.

The history is about Treemonisha, (Adine Aaron) who is an adoptive daughter of Ned (Willard White) and Monisha (Grace Bumbry). Ned is an Arkansas plantation manager, and Monisha uses her education to try to tear her people away from ignorance and the superstitions mongered by the conjurers Simon (Jacques-Greg Belobo), Luddud (Jean-Pierre Cadignan),  and Zodzetrick (Stephen Salters). The action takes place in 1884, when Treemonisha is eighteen years old, having thus born a year after the end of the Civil War (1861-1865) that resulted in the abolition of slavery
. The stury of the young girl shows many similarities with Scott Joplin´s own path: He was born in 1867 or 1868 and received classical music education thanks to the white family for whom his mother worked, and who impressed with this prodigious talents. Treemonisha was published in 1911, which is why we are able today to listen to this moving and surprisingly modern work with its author, who died in 1917, would have so much liked seeing performed.

It is indeed a great pleasure for the audience and a hit for the production that the two world famous singers Grace Bumbry and Willard White are appearing in each their demanding role. Grace Bumbry is performing one of the long beautiful arias in the beginning, “The Sacred Tree”, where she is explaining how they found Treemonisha as baby laying under the big tree, and therefore they gave her the name after Monisha, but were adding Tree in front of it, so the name became Treemonisha
. Grace Bumbry still has a wonderful voice, no disturbing vibrato, and a beauty in her pianissimo, which is outstanding. Willard White still has the power as lyric dramatic base, as we remember from his outstanding Wagner roles, and in addition, he is not afraid to joke, and are having fun with the rest of the young cast on stage. He knows the role as Ned well, as he already was playing Ned at Houston Grand Opera in May 1975. A few months later Treemonisha came on Broadway, and a Pulitzer Prize was awarded posthumously to the composer in 1976 for the work. [1]

In other roles we enjoyed Janinah Burnett as Lucy, Loïs Félix as Cephus, Miamli Lalapantasi as Andy and an outstanding Krister St. Hill as Parson Alltalk, the priest, which is singing the beautiful Good Advice aria. 

The leading cast was followed brilliantly up by the very good Choir of Theatre Chatelet, during its choir master Sergei Pavlov. The Ensemble Orchestral of Paris played ragtime, and romances, and all the many variations in the opera. First class conducted by Kazem Abdullah. The little ballet of 12 dancers made the staging very much alive, and with the good choreography by Bianca Li, it became a big and wonderful American Opera evening.

In a very good orchestration by Gunther Schuller in a new production of Theatre Chatelet produced in connection with The Dramatic Publishing Company of Woodstock, Illinois, we got a very pleasant meeting with a long range of outstanding black opera singers
. Which reminds me of my many meetings with the outstanding soprano Anne Brown in Norway, as many knows the role as Bess in Porgy and Bess was created by George Gershwin for ms
. Anne Brown. Treemonisha has very many of the same kind of good qualities which has done Porgy and Bess world famous, the only problem is that the audience don’t know the music. But they do know the ragtime style of Scott Joplin, and in addition to that, which we enjoyed for example in the great “Wrong is Never Right” and in the finale “A real slow drag”, we to got some beautiful romances, and a hit was “We will rest a while”.

Roland Roure is responsible for the conception of the scenography, dramaturgy, decoration and colorful costumes.  Blanca Li for good staging and choreography. I liked very much the lighting by Jacques Rouveyrollis and the Video realization on stage by Robert Nortik. This gave the scenography extra life, and helped moving in and out for example houses the sky, the stars, it was wonderful.

The text is by the composer Scott Joplin. It was performed in English, and for the international city Paris, this is very positive
. As always the programmes at Theatre de Chatelet are very good and informative. Conception for the program is Sandra Solvit.