Justice enjoyed Glimmerglass Opera.

Ginsburg was a “rock star” at Glimmerglass Festival

Before Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg even said a word at The Glimmerglass Festival, the crowd rose to its feet and applauded upon seeing the most renowned and respected advocate for the arts enter the theater.

“She was a phenomenon. It was like having a rock star here,” said Francesca Zambello, director of Glimmerglass Festival and the Washington National Opera. “It was very moving because she would enter the theater, and people would start cheering. She would always get a standing ovation.”

Ginsburg, who died Friday at the age of 87, was a frequent attendee and speaker at The Glimmerglass Festival, an opera presenter in Cooperstown.

Zambello remembers how Ginsburg

connected issues of her work as a Supreme Court justice to opera. In 2017, Ginsburg held a Q&A session after a revised version of “Scalia/ginsburg,” a comedy based on the Supreme Court decisions of longtime friends Ginsburg and fellow Justice Antonin Scalia, who were famously in opposition on many legal matters.

“It humanizes the Supreme Court when audience-goers see a woman so taken with such a passionate art form,” Zambello said.

Ginsburg was extremely knowledgeable about opera, Zambello said. She knew the music, the story, the libretto. And she was always gracious in conversations about opera.

“Even when she didn’t like something, she would say it in such kind terms, that you’d be like, ‘Oh,

OK, slay me some more,’” Zambello said. “She was amazing. She was so, so gracious.”

Zambello said Ginsburg often talked about how the arts could “be another way to communicate and try to overcome differences — or to at least have dialogue.”

Joseph Dalton, a Times Union classical music writer and critic, recalled when Ginsburg got on stage at Glimmerglass to make remarks about law in the arts.

“She was a very quiet and humble presence that everyone was aware of when she was attending opera,” Dalton said. “Her passion for opera benefited all of us.”

Derrick Wang, the composer-librettist of “Scalia/ginsburg,” said it was “a privilege to hear her speak about so many topics where she had a very considered and deep perspective.”

When he was working on the opera, Wang would send Ginsburg a script with footnotes that detailed how he was making the choices for the lyrics and music. He could tell she was looking at every little detail.

“Sometime when I had made an error here or there, she would find it and she would ever so gently and politely point me in the right direction,” Wang said. “Momentarily, I was just slightly embarrassed, but more than that, I was just so honored because I thought, ‘A Supreme Court justice is reading the tiny little footnote in the opera libretto that I’m writing.”

Wang said two of his most vivid memories of Ginsburg are from upstate.

One was in Saratoga Springs when he presented excerpts from “Scalia/ Ginsburg” at the Second Circuit Judicial Conference in June 2018.

The other was at The Glimmerglass Festival when he sat a few rows back from Ginsburg, who was there to watch a revised version of the show.

He was a bit nervous to hear her thoughts. After the show she told him: “It gets better every time I see it.”

“My journey with this opera and getting to know her is one of the great highlights of my life,” Wang said. “I’m so thankful that I got to be a part, however small, of her own journey as a lawyer, as a music lover and as a human being.”