By BARBARA HOFFMAN [NY Post, 6 March 2006]

SCOTT Joplin, the Ragtime King, wrote one opera - but, as far as success goes, it was no "Maple Leaf Rag."

Instead, "Treemonisha," a 1911 work about African-American slaves' emergence into the modern world, fell on deaf ears, which broke Joplin's heart and presumably hastened his death (in 1917).