Dubbed the "King of Ragtime" by his music publisher, Scott Joplin (1868-1917) was a formally educated musician whose popular piano rags inspired him to go on to composition on a larger, far more developed scale and conception. His second opera, Treemonisha, an example of his most serious work, was published in 1911 at his own expense.
The story of a confident young woman whose life, in many respects, paralleled Joplin's, the work was...