A Note from Ryan Brown About Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

A Note from Maestro Ryan Brown

Opera Lafayette mourns the passing and honors the extraordinary legacy of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and extends its heartfelt condolences to her family.

Photo Blog: Scotus Blog

Opera Lafayette would like to add its voice to the many tributes to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She was well known as a supporter of opera, and OL was one of the many beneficiaries of her generosity. Despite her status as a crusader for women’s rights, a distinguished jurist, and more recently a liberal icon, she somehow managed to give me an opportunity to view her as a personal friend, or at least as someone who showed genuine interest and support in what was important to me artistically.

When I first met her, at a benefit the French Ambassador gave for Opera Lafayette, her gregarious husband made the biggest impression; I’m not sure the Justice said a word, and if she did, I strained to hear it. Subsequently, however, I would write and invite her to performances, and, to my surprise, she invariably wrote back. She was one of the most polite and consistent correspondents I have ever known, an experience I’m sure many share. There was one time when she made me especially proud, and another when she won my heart. The first was when she was the invited keynote speaker to the annual Opera America convention, held that year in Washington, during which she made a point of mentioning to the audience the importance of Opera Lafayette’s work. The other was when I conducted an opera at the Glimmerglass Festival.

As I approached her at an after party, she threw out her arms to give me an enthusiastic hug. In my surprise and eagerness to reciprocate, I stepped on her foot, and nearly knocked her down, whereupon several Secret S-service agents lunged forward to make sure she was ok! Thank goodness she apparently wasn’t too put off by my clumsiness, and our association continued. The last opera I spoke to her about was Leonore, and I’ll always associate her with that remarkable heroine. We will miss her, but know that like Leonore, her courage, perseverance, and generosity will continue to inspire for years to come.

Ryan's Summer

Forging rural opera

Our Founder and Artistic Director, Ryan Brown, in Southwest Colorado

This summer included a trip to the Opera America conference, lots of Beethoven Leonore study, and some unusual musical development work in the west.

The Opera America conference is always an interesting barometer of trends in the field, most of which are currently focused on community engagement, so much so in fact that one employee of a major company went so far as to suggest that the future of opera may not lie with trained voices!

Back in SW Colorado, I do my best musical study in a little cabin in a river canyon. There's a piano there, but no internet. After an aria or short scene of Leonore, I'll break for a few minutes by sitting on the deck and watching the light filter through the pines, cottonwoods, and quaking aspen or the way it dances on the water in the stream. After a longer scene or at an act break, I'll go off and irrigate, do some business, and return the next afternoon. The idyllic setting isn't always accommodating, however - this year I arrived after a spring snowstorm had brought down a large number trees, two of them directly onto the cabin! Some summer work projects are unanticipated....

The nearby town has an opera house - a theater on the second floor of a 100-plus year-old mercantile building - which an enterprising and civic-minded couple recently bought and are slowly restoring. They are especially excited that Opera Lafayette is going to bring The Blacksmith to the opera house this spring. At the end of the summer the local music teacher and I played and sang our way through some of the plot over a potluck dinner at the local Grange for folks who had offered to volunteer. When they started spontaneously singing along with “Buffalo Gals wontcha come out tonight,” I began to think that maybe the Opera America conference speaker wasn't actually too far off the mark.