A Conversation with Denyce Graves: Treemonisha with the Washington National Opera

Denyce Graves, one of the greatest opera singers of her generation, sang her final performance just a few weeks ago on January 24, 2026, in a production of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess at the Metropolitan Opera. But don't call her retired: she now divides her time between her foundation, which supports young artists and promotes equity in the arts, and her new occupation as a stage director of opera. She was born and raised in Washington, D.C., and she began her long association with the Washington National Opera (then known simply as The Washington Opera) as a supernumerary in 1979. So it is a kind of homecoming for her to direct for the WNO, and it's especially significant because, even though it's based on an unfinished manuscript from 1910, she has assembled a team that has turned into, in her words, "a brand new work."

Scott Joplin is known as the "King of Ragtime", but he always had ambitions to write more serious compositions. Sadly, the combination of financial difficulties, struggles with mental and physical health, and the daunting barriers facing a Black man trying to gain a foothold into classical music, meant that he never fulfilled those dreams, though the opera that he left unfinished at his death, Treemonisha, has received a number of stagings and reconstructions since his music enjoyed a revival in the 1970s. He wrote his own libretto for the work, which tells the story of a young Black woman in 1884 who, having left home to learn to read and get an education, returns to her community, a former slave plantation on the Texas/Arkansas border (where Joplin himself came from), where she faces (but eventually overcomes) resistance in her attempts to convince the community to reject the superstitious practices of the village's "conjurers". Making a young educated Black woman the protagonist was very forward-thinking on Joplin's part, and it's sad he never got to see the culture catch up to him, as it did in 1976 when his opera won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize.

Ms. Graves and her team - including composer Damien Sneed, who wrote new arrangements of Joplin's score, and playwright Kyle Bass, who wrote new dialogue and lyrics - went to the Library of Congress for their research. This could well be the premiere of a major work of American musical theater, a collaboration across eleven decades. 

In my illuminating interview with her, Ms. Graves shares some truly profound observations about the opera, its significance in the present day, her own career arc - and she even sings!