Though Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has ascended to the peak of the legal world, she says that for her, "a dream come true" is the new opera Scalia/Ginsburg.
RBG and Scalia both wrote just-released prefaces for the opera. From them, we learn both that Ginsburg was asked by a grade school teacher to refrain from singing ("If I could choose the talent I would most like to have, it would be a glorious voice," she says), and that Scalia sang in the Georgetown Glee Club and in choirs for much of his life, including while on the DC Circuit. Written by lawyer Derrick Wang, Scalia/Ginsburg: A (Gentle) Parody of Operatic Proportions was inspired by the justices' differing views and nonetheless enduring friendship. (More about Derrick and the opera here.)
Before the opera's world premiere on July 11 at the Castleton Festival in Virginia, Justice Ginsburg will give a presentation on law in opera. (We already knew she was a fan of Scalia/Ginsburg when we heard her at an event in 2013 reciting its opening "Rage Aria" by heart.) The full libretto to Derrick's opera was published in the Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts' Winter 2015 edition. It includes 248 footnotes on both legal and operatic precedent and aria titles such as "You are searching in vain (for a bright-line solution)."
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