If it’s RBG, it’s for me.
A tribute to the O.G. Op Culture maven.
Picture it. The year is 2001. Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States for 8 years. The second female ever appointed to the position. Meanwhile, in rural North Carolina, 12-year-old Alyssa Martin is busy fulfilling her daily duties as the “office assistant” during one of her elective periods.
*Seriously, other kids wanted to play…I wanted to learn how institutions are run…predictable af in hindsight.*
On this particular fall day, I can even remember what the musty mid-century teacher's lounge smelled like as I diligently sorted and filed the mail into the staff mailboxes. Suddenly, a male teacher enters stage left. He's a relic, much like the building I’m standing in. (By 2001 the school is called Western Rockingham Middle School, but if you catch a local who is old enough they’ll tell you that this building is, in fact, the “old white high school” from back when our town was still segregated. North Carolina did not fully desegregate schools to the satisfaction of the Brown ruling until the 1971-72 school year. Yeah…I know.)
But I digress. Let’s get back to the teacher’s lounge…
Fully Grown Male Teacher (whose job is to educate and inspire): “You know Martin…it’s a shame you work so hard”
Me (a 12-year-old): “Why?’
F.G.M.T.: “Because it doesn’t really matter. You can work as hard as you want but you’ll just never break through the glass ceiling!”
*F.G.M.T. throws his head back and walks out laughing as his shitty elephant-legged Dockers that are barely containing his paunchy midsection swish down the hallway and back to his classroom*
Needless to say, in 2001 little Alyssa didn’t know anything about the glass ceiling yet. She didn’t yet know about the 30+ years that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had spent fighting for her and every other little girl in America to grow up in a country where it was possible to have a bank account in their name, buy or lease property, or even be considered equal under the law to their male counterparts. Today I stand on the upper side of the glass ceiling that she and others not only broke through, but shattered for me. I get the immense privilege to be an independent artist with an advanced degree, an unmarried female business owner and entrepreneur and a free agent over my own body and reproductive organs all because of the tireless fight that The Notorious RBG led for the patriarchy to “take their feet off our necks.”
*If you’re wondering what happened to F.G.M.T. from the scene above, you’ll be happy to know he was arrested in 2011 on charges of manslaughter after shooting and killing a neighbor out walking their dog from inside his pickup truck. You will be infuriated to know however, that the patriarchy protected him well and he got off with 1 year served, 9 suspended, 3 years probation, and a $96,000 fine paid to the widow over 8 years. You can rage read about it here. (Ironic that he thought I would be the one who would be trapped in a metaphorical building...*
We all know the basics of her life by now, right? Born in Brooklyn in 1933, RBG attended college at Harvard University as 1 of only 9 women and then went on to attend Columbia Law School as one of only 12 women admitted before graduating tied for first in her class. What followed was 34 years of pounding the judicial pavement for gender, racial and LGBTQ equality before her appointment to the highest court in the land in 1993. In her time on the bench, she was characterized by her searing dissents both in written form and as a fashion choice. In her later years, she became a pop culture icon known as the Notorious RBG and found herself in millions of selfies with her millennial fans worldwide, on more merch than most pop stars, and the LITERAL face of social activism for the younger generation. Her lifelong passion for opera has, by OSSIA standards at least, has set her apart as an Op Culture icon as well.
RBG was well known for her love of opera. In almost every personal interview she highlighted opera as one of the distinctive pleasures that gave her joy in life. In this interview she shares her top 5 favorite operas and describes why she loves them. I’ve taken the liberty of creating a more extensive YouTube playlist on the Op Culture channel for you to check out more of her interviews about her love of opera and her thoughts on life and law PLUS her favorite opera scenes so you can decide for yourself if you and RBG have the same taste in opera ;) You can check it out by clicking here.
She was not the only Justice on the bench with a love for opera. Her longtime friend Antonin Scalia shared her interest and was a lifelong fan as well. They appeared onstage together as supernumeraries (extras) in Ariadne auf Naxos at the Washington National Opera in 1994 and she returned in 2016 to make her triumphant operatic debut in the speaking role of the Duchess of Krakenthorpe in Donizetti’s La fille du régiment. Justice Ginsburg even wrote her own dialogue borrowing from some of her own legal turns of phrase to absolutely bring the house down. (Check out our friend Deborah Nansteel as RBG’s co-star!)
The most note-able (see what I did there?) display her friendship with Scalia and their shared love of opera comes in the form of a one-act opera by Derrick Wang entitled Scalia/Ginsburg. The opera takes place in their chambers and draws on both of their opinions and writings to move the dialogue forward. It’s a zany, comic plot that takes the title characters through a rigorous test of their legal prowess while showing their deep friendship and commitment to respect one another, all while quoting some of the most iconic opera phrases known to the ear. When the libretto was originally published in the Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts in 2015, both justices took it upon themselves to contribute a preface that bears reprinting here:
Preface by Ruth Bader Ginsburg:
Scalia/Ginsburg is for me a dream come true. If I could choose the talent I would most like to have, it would be a glorious voice. I would be a great diva, perhaps Renata Tebaldi or Beverly Sills or, in the mezzo range, Marilyn Horne. But my grade school music teacher, with brutal honesty, rated me a sparrow, not a robin. I was told to mouth the words, never to sing them. Even so, I grew up with a passion for opera, though I sing only in the shower, and in my dreams.
One fine day, a young composer, librettist and pianist named Derrick Wang approached Justice Scalia and me with a request. While studying Constitutional Law at the University of Maryland Law School, Wang had an operatic idea. The different perspectives of Justices Scalia and Ginsburg on constitutional interpretation, he thought, could be portrayed in song. Wang put his idea to the “will it write” test. He composed a comic opera with an important message brought out in the final duet, “We are different, we are one”—one in our reverence for the Constitution, the U.S. judiciary and the Court on which we serve.
Would we listen to some excerpts from the opera, Wang asked, and then tell him whether we thought his work worthy of pursuit and performance? Good readers, as you leaf through the libretto, check some of the many footnotes disclosing Wang’s sources, and imagine me a dazzling diva, I think you will understand why, in answer to Wang’s question, I just said “Yes.”
Preface by Antonin Scalia:
While Justice Ginsburg is confident that she has achieved her highest and best use as a Supreme Justice, I, alas, have the nagging doubt that I could have been a contendah—for a divus, or whatever a male diva is called. My father had a good tenor voice, which he trained at the Eastman School of Music. I sang in the Georgetown Glee Club (directed by Washington Post music critic Paul Hume, whom President Truman rewarded with a valuable letter for his review of Margaret’s singing). I have sung in choirs and choral groups much of my life, up to and including my days on the D.C. Circuit. And the utter peak of my otherwise uneventful judicial career was an evening after the Opera Ball at the British Ambassador’s Residence, when I joined two tenors from the Washington Opera singing various songs at the piano—the famous Three Tenors performance.
I suppose, however, that it would be too much to expect the author of Scalia/Ginsburg to allow me to play (sing) myself—especially if Ruth refuses to play (sing) herself. Even so, it may be a good show.
I have had the distinct pleasure of working on this piece twice in my career. Most recently, I was contracted to sing the role of Ginsburg with the Virginia Opera (which has been postponed due to COVID-19). In getting to peruse the score once more I have been struck by the sincere love and respect that two people with completely opposite views can hold for each other while never compromising their personal values. As much as it’s been a thrill to interpret some of the most impactful words of one of my personal icons through music, it’s also driven home for me that what's needed most in our divided world is a double-down on compassion, forgiveness, and understanding. I’ll let the words of the final duet between the title characters speak for themselves::
We are different.
We are one.
The U.S. contradiction
The tension we adore:
Separate strands unite in friction
To protect our country’s core.
This, the strength of our nation,
Thus is our Court’s design:
We are kindred,
We are nine.
To strive for definition,
To question and engage,
Let us speak to our tradition
Or address a future age.
This, the duty upon us
This, the freedom
To judge how our strands are spun:
This makes us different
We are one.
We are one decision from forging the source of tomorrow
One decision from shifting the tide
Always one decision from charting the course we will steer
For our future Is unclear,
But one thing is constant
The Constitution we revere
We are stewards of this trust;
We uphold it as we must,
For the work of our Court is just begun
And this is why we will see justice done:
We are different; We are one.
To say that Ruth Bader Ginsburg has enabled me to become the woman I am today is a complete understatement. It was one of the foremost honors of my life up to this point to be able to shake her hand and tell her what her life and work had meant to me backstage at the Glimmerglass Festival in 2018 after a performance of The Cunning Little Vixen.
*I have to sidebar here to tell you guys that I did 9 performances of that show and not ONCE did I ever throw a prop into the audience…until the night RBG was there. I still have nightmares about being carted off by the Secret Service for assaulting a Supreme Court Justice with a foam prop duck. (There are all kinds of jokes here with the many meanings of the word “duck” as it pertains to this particular situation…I think I’ve covered them all through the years but please feel free to have at it in the comments*
I hate to break it to you, but there’s no way you’re getting out of this blog without seeing MY backstage photo with RBG. You’ll notice that I look overjoyed and she looks very confused about how someone who just sang a full opera role on a stage can be such an insane person that can’t seem to string a sentence together in her presence and is maybe crying a little? She’s probably also thinking “this idiot thew a duck at me…..”
On a more serious note, we all owe Ruth Bader Ginsburg a huge debt of gratitude. Her pioneering work on Equal Rights has made possible the privileges we enjoy today and has ensured our right to keep fighting for a country that represents the voices of ALL its citizens, because we’re not there yet. We still have work to do and that starts with VOTING ON NOVEMBER 3rd! I hope her dissents and opinions ring out through the future as she continues to shape the legal landscape of America and inspire generations to come.
It seems a little poetic to me that this post that marks the passing of one of my personal SHEroes will go live on my 31st birthday. As I reflect on my 31 years on this planet, I am so grateful for everything the women who have come before me have done to light my path and I’m inspired to pick up their torches and carry them for as long as I am able. I want to leave you with the words RBG penned in 2016 for the preface of her memoir My Own Words:
“Did you always want to be a judge” or, more exorbitantly, “a Supreme Court Justice?” Schoolchildren visiting me at the Court, as they do at least weekly, ask that question more than any other. It is a sign of huge progress made. To today’s youth, judgeship as an aspiration for a girl is not at all outlandish. Contrast the ancient days (the fall of 1956) when I entered law school. Women were less than 3 percent of the legal profession in the United States, and only one woman had ever served on a federal appellate court. Today about half the nation’s law students and more than one-third of our federal judges are women, including three of the nine Justices seated on the U.S. Supreme Court bench. Women hold more than 30 percent of U.S. law school deanships and serve as general counsel to 24 percent of Fortune 500 companies. In my long life, I have seen great changes! How fortunate I was to be alive and a lawyer when, for the first time in U.S. history, it became possible to urge, successfully, before legislatures and courts, the equal-citizenship stature of women and men as a fundamental constitutional principle. Feminists, caring men among them, had urged just that for generations. Until the late 1960s, however, society was not prepared to heed their plea.
[…]
Earlier, I spoke of great changes I have seen in women’s occupations. Yet one must acknowledge the still bleak part of the picture. Most people in poverty in the United States and the world over are women and children, women’s earnings here and abroad trail the earnings of men with comparable education and experience, our workplaces do not adequately accommodate the demands of childbearing and childrearing, and we have yet to devise effective ways to ward off sexual harassment at work and domestic violence in our homes. I am optimistic, however, that movement toward enlistment of the talent of all who compose “We, the People,” will continue. As expressed by my brave colleague, the first woman on the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor:
"For both men and women the first step in getting power is to become visible to others, and then to put on an impressive show. . . . As women achieve power, the barriers will fall. As society sees what women can do, as women see what women can do, there will be more women out there doing things, and we’ll all be better off for it."
I heartily concur in that expectation.
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg July 2016
Thank you Justice Ginsburg. Your life made a difference to so many, but especially to a little girl in rural North Carolina struggling to understand her power and agency in the world around her. Your legacy will live on in the women whose lives you’ve fundamentally changed, both now and in the days to come. I hope we can make you proud. Rest in peace.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
1933-2020
יהי זכרה ברוך
May her memory be a blessing.
