Scott Joplin’s Lost Ragtime Opera Score

On Oct. 16, 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited the president of the Tuskegee Institute, Booker T. Washington, to the White House for a formal dinner. This outraged many white Americans, as they took it as an affront to democracy. Their racist and hypocritical behavior inspired Scott Joplin, the king of ragtime, to write his first ragtime opera, A Guest of Honor. This amazing piece of work was unfortunately lost here in Springfield in 1903. Join the Illinois State Museum as we learn how this important piece of American history was lost and never found.