Former Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were ideological foes and yet famously close friends. They often dined together, spent most New Year's Eves together and regularly attended operas — a shared love — at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., after arguing all day on the court.
That unusual friendship inspired an opera about them: Scalia/Ginsburg, by Derrick Wang, which premiered in 2015, a year before Scalia's death and five before Ginsburg's. Given the gravity of the justices' work, one might expect the opera to be serious, but it's a buddy comedy, as the composer himself described it. It's sure to entertain when the Opera Company of Middlebury brings its comedic-opera expertise to bear in three performances of the work this weekend.
Founder and artistic director Doug Anderson pairs the one-act opera with a Vermont premiere of the 17-minute curtain-raiser "The Interlopers," by Cuban-born Jorge Martín-Buján, a former Vermonter who now lives in Texas. The brief work is part of a series called Beast and Super-Beast, based on short stories by British writer Saki (the pen name of H.H. Munro), that premiered in the 1990s. Anderson relocates the setting of "The Interlopers," a story about a land dispute, from eastern Europe to Vermont.
Wang, who is something of a polymath, earned a bachelor's in music at Harvard University and a master's at Yale before deciding to study constitutional law at the University of Maryland. While reading cases for his law degree, and particularly Scalia's famously fiery dissents, he started to "hear music," he said during a TED talk. The dissents reminded him of rage arias, a type of solo in baroque Italian operas of the 1700s.
Known for her sense of humor, Ginsburg was funny just describing Scalia/Ginsburg for a live audience in New York City months before her death. "It opens with Scalia's rage aria. Scalia is locked up in a dark room. He's being punished for excessive dissenting," she said. "I then emerge through a glass ceiling to help him pass the test he needs to pass to get out of the dark room."
That test is arranged by the opera's third character, the Commentator, a takeoff on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Commendatore in Don Giovanni. In fact, much of the opera refers to or even borrows from operas throughout the genre's 400-year history — Wang's nifty way of transposing the tradition of legal precedent into operatic form. When Scalia sings about the court's changeability, for example, he does so to the melody of "La donna è mobile," Giuseppe Verdi's famous aria about the fickleness of women from Rigoletto.
"The music adds this whole other dimension by wittily commenting on everything we see," Anderson said. "Part of the fun is, Wait, that's Gilbert and Sullivan! Wait, that's La Bohème!"
All three singers are comedic regulars with the company. Tenor Lucas Levy, soprano Bevin Hill and bass-baritone Daniel Klein will sing Scalia, Ginsburg and the Commentator, respectively.
Ginsburg's first aria is about her judicial philosophy. For her, the Constitution is a living document that was written to evolve with the times — as opposed to Scalia's originalism. The aria's music, appropriately, enacts the evolution of music by spinning through a mini-history of styles, including gospel.
"Any time that I have an opportunity to sing gospel just brings joy to my heart," soprano Hill said. Though an excerpt of that aria is available on YouTube, not much else is, she added.
"A lot of companies have done it, but there isn't much material out there for us to study. It's nice not to have any recordings to listen to because you can really make it your own," Hill said.
Anderson said he chose Scalia/Ginsburg for the company's fall offering to counteract the country's current climate of divisiveness five weeks before the presidential election.
"It's the kind of thing we need right now," he said, "because it's about two people who could not be more different but found a way to work together civilly and were actually the best of friends."
Anderson added that the opera changed his view of Scalia. "You actually feel for the guy, the son of immigrants; you have understanding and compassion for him."
Hill, who lives in Georgia, echoed the sentiment: "Scalia famously said, 'I attack ideas. I don't attack people.' It's a wonderful reminder that, while we all have different opinions, we are one country. It's so important to listen, whether to this opera or your friend's opinion. That's how we start change."