Liszt was not an opera composer but the genre was very important in his life, especially in his years as concert pianist. His only opera, Don Sanche was composed at the age of thirteen. The piece had only four performances in the Paris Opera including a disasterous premiere on 17th October, 1825. It was performed again only as a curiosity in London in 1977. The reason for that over 150 year hiatus was that the score was lost, as Liszt believed, in a fire but he was not at all sad because of the loss: ‘It contained nothing, it became nothing’, he said of his opera. He, however, played many of his own (many times partly improvised) transcriptions of the operas of others. He had medleys of the best-known operatic melodies by Mozart, Donizetti and Bellini on his repertoire, such as the paraphrases for operas by Gounod, Meyerbeer, Verdi, Rossini and the now almost unknown Auber and Pacini. The opera become a very tipically romantic genre. Of course, we all know that many operas were composed in the baroque and classical era, but as the symphony declined, opera had a rising tendency in the romantic era, especially in Italy and France. (Romantic German operas were rare, Wagner’s music-dramas meant different, new dimensions in music history.) Traditional opera, full of hit-like melodies, was one of the most popular genres. It is not by chance that Liszt frequently included opera paraphrases in his concert programmes. That was common practice, Thalberg, Gottschalk and everyone else wrote and played opera paraphrases. Later especially violinists wrote virtuoso pieces, variations using opera melodies. However, it was Liszt, who really put this into practice. One could say that either before or after him, nobody did so much for popularizing opera as he did.

Because it was easy to understand owing to its text and because of the common concert practice, probably best represented by Liszt, opera was the most popular genre and was held in the highest esteem in New Orleans around the turn of the century for about forty years. The performances of the French Opera in New Orleans were generally sold out and what they played (mostly the then-fashionable works of second- and third rate composers whom now nobody remembers), were whistled and hummed by the whole town including jazz musicians. Jazz musicians in New Orleans were not blacks but mostly creoles who belonged to the social elite. They regularly went to see the new operas, probably also because they were the entertaining musicians of the city, just like gypsies in Hungary, who had to include the newest hits in their repertoire right away. It is not by chance then that almost every New Orlenas musician mentions the French Opera in interviews or memoirs as the city’s most important musical centre. Melodies of many popular jazz songs originate from the works played in the Opera, thus mostly strengthening the French influence in jazz. It is also known that the French Opera company tried to play not only the most popular but the newest pieces so jazz musicians were kept up-to-date and were not left behind Europe and especially Paris. Of course, as I mentioned above, one can mainly think of the lighter works although all musicians remember the musicians of the French Opera in New Orleans as being highly skilled and well-trained singers and instrumentalists. That was the reason why jazz pianists, in New Orleans Jelly Roll Morton in the first place, frequently adapted melodies of European operas.(90) Morton and the others surely improvised on those popular melodies just like Liszt did.

It was obvious under the circumstances that black composers had to write operas to prove their human and musical equality. Black minstrel companies frequently played opera caricatures, ‘negro musicals’ or fragments from European operas. The opera craze lasted long: Julius Lenzberg’s Operatic Rag was published in 1914 (recorded by Joseph Moskowitz in 1916 for Victor) and the Delta Rhythm Boys still made big success with its hit, the Rigoletto Paraphrase based on Verdi’s opera. And let us not forget about Tosca Rag written in the early twenties by the great Hungarian ragtime composer, Aladár Székely.

But now we jump back to the beginning of the ragtime era: Will Marion Cook was the very first who tried to write a ragtime opera even though it was only himself who labelled his highly successful Clorindy, or the Origin of the Cakewalk (played in New York as early as in 1898!) and In Dahomey (1902) as operas. The former was reviewed by critic Sylvester Russell as follows: ‘'Clorinda' was no opera. It was simply a good, first-class, rag-time musical cake walk. There is no such thing as rag-time opera; no opera can be written all in rag-time.’(91) After such precedents A Guest of Honor, the first truly ‘negro opera’ was composed by Scott Joplin in 1902. Unfortunately we cannot be sure how truly ‘negro’ this opera was as the work was lost although Joplin toured with it in five states and it was also performed in St. Louis where he lived at the time. (Despite that, there are still many who doubt the existence of the opera although it is proved by many newspaper articles and other references.) Joplin not only composed the opera but wrote the lyrics, directed it and did everything else. This was probably not only done by necessity but was the influence of Wagner. It is known that the German Alfred Ernst who was conductor and director of the St. Louis Choral Symphony Society between 1894 and 1907, did not look down on ragtime unlike most German musicians. He met Joplin in 1901 and was very fond of him. He even promised Joplin to include his Maple Leaf Rag and Swipesy in the repertoire of his upcoming German tour. (It is not confirmed if he had really done so.) Ernst was the one who introduced Wagner and his music to Joplin. Joplin was captured and wanted to compose an opera using a national (in his case, Afro-American) topic. Edward Berlin has a very logical explanation in his great Joplin book (in which the Ernst story can also be found) about Booker T. Washington being the ‘Guest of Honour’. Washington was the best known guest of honour of the White House in those days (in 1901) being an Afro-American and still getting an invitation to the residency of Roosevelt, President of the United States. This was a story that was really good and big enough to write a ragtime opera about. (Joplin was always loyal to the American president, as proved by his using the slogan of the time, Roosevelt’s famous ‘strenuous life’ expression, cited from the president’s 1899 speech, as a title of his ragtime in 1902.)

Similar to the lost opera, Joplin’s Treemonisha composed in 1911 had an Afro-American plot as well. Although it received good reviews in a few musical journals, it was staged only in the early seventies, long after Joplin’s death. Treemonisha, a hidden autobiography of Joplin, is about the rise of a small Afro-American community, its release from the bonds of old-fashioned traditions and mystic religion, about the power of studying as the only chance for Afro-Americans. It can be said that Joplin was a civil rights activist in music. His great tragedy was that his main work, Treemonisha was neglected by the public. The truth is that even though he was musically very well-educated by that time and although he wrote the work as a strictly ‘Negro opera’ it was rather a poor copy of European music than a real ragtime opera. (The best parts of the work are, however, the ragtime numbers.) Joplin could not really leave thinking in ragtime-like sixteen-bar strains. (Well, the same can be said about Dittersdorf, for example, as opposed to Mozart.) Joplin had always wanted to write a ‘real American’ opera but when the work was finished he, for pride or for financial reasons, emphasized the ‘Negro character’ of the work as this makes American music really American.

Irving Berlin also planned to write a ragtime opera. (Irving Berlin who, according to Joplin, stole the melody of the Verse in his world-famous Alexander's Ragtime Band from Marching Onwards of Treemonisha. Joplin, after suing Berlin unsuccessfully, changed a few notes of the melody in the printed version because of his personal pride and to avoid similar attacks from the ‘Berlin side’.) An interview with Berlin appeared in New York’s Dramatic Mirror in 1914: ‘If I live long enough… I shall write an opera completely in ragtime. I have not fully developed my story but it of course will be laid in the South. […] beautiful thoughts can best be expressed by syncopation.’(92) Berlin’s opera remained only a plan, however, and he never proved his questionable statement in any major work although he lived long enough to find the time for it.

I will only mention George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess as the story and music are well-known by almost everyone and its appropriate melodic and harmonic analysis would be too long for this study. Gershwin’s piece is neither ragtime nor jazz opera but an American opera that integrates Afro-American elements as well. Thus maybe Gershwin realized Joplin’s dreams.