Throughout history, some of the most brilliant legal minds have sought refuge in the arts, finding balance between the rigorous demands of jurisprudence and the soul-nourishing power of creative expression. Among these remarkable individuals, Ruth Bader Ginsburg stands out as a particularly compelling example of someone who understood the profound necessity of maintaining this delicate equilibrium. Her relationship with opera wasn’t merely a casual hobby or a superficial interest cultivated for social purposes. Rather, it represented an essential component of her psychological and emotional well-being, a counterbalance to the demanding intellectual landscape she navigated daily as a Justice on the United States Supreme Court.
Ginsburg’s professional life demanded absolute precision, unwavering logic, and meticulous attention to detail. Every word in a legal opinion carried weight, every precedent required careful consideration, and every argument needed to be constructed with ironclad reasoning. The courtroom left no space for ambiguity or emotional indulgence. Yet this same woman, known for her measured judicial temperament and carefully crafted dissents, harbored a passionate devotion to one of the most emotionally extravagant art forms humanity has ever created. This apparent contradiction reveals something profound about the human need for balance, about the way our minds require both discipline and release, structure and freedom, reason and emotion.
The world of opera provided Ginsburg with something her professional life could never offer: a space where emotion reigned supreme, where logic took a backseat to feeling, and where the human voice could soar to heights that seemed to transcend ordinary human capability. In reflecting on this art form she loved so deeply, Ginsburg observed that the operatic voice possesses qualities that set it apart from all other forms of vocal expression. This wasn’t merely an aesthetic preference or a subjective opinion about musical taste. Rather, it represented her recognition of something genuinely unique about the trained operatic voice, something that captured both the technical mastery and the emotional vulnerability that she found so compelling.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s tenure on the Supreme Court spanned an impressive twenty-seven years, during which she became one of the most influential and recognizable justices in American history. Throughout this extended period, her daily routine involved immersing herself in extraordinarily complex legal documents, parsing through dense briefs that often ran hundreds of pages, and crafting judicial opinions that would shape American law for generations to come. The intellectual demands of this work were relentless and unforgiving. Each case required her to hold multiple competing legal theories in her mind simultaneously, to weigh precedents spanning centuries of jurisprudence, and to consider the far-reaching implications of every word she committed to paper.
Given this intense mental burden, Ginsburg recognized early in her career that she needed a form of escape that could truly disconnect her from legal thinking. She couldn’t simply engage in lighter reading or casual entertainment, because her mind would inevitably drift back to pending cases and unresolved legal questions. What she needed was something so completely absorbing, so utterly different from her professional work, that it demanded her complete attention and left no mental space for legal analysis. Opera provided exactly this kind of total immersion. The combination of music, drama, spectacle, and vocal virtuosity created an experience so rich and multifaceted that she found herself unable to think about anything else while in the opera house.
She articulated this phenomenon in various interviews and public appearances, noting that during a performance, the law simply vanished from her consciousness. The dramatic narratives unfolding on stage, the orchestral music swelling through the theater, and especially the extraordinary voices of the performers commanded her full attention. This wasn’t merely distraction or entertainment in the conventional sense. Rather, it represented a form of mental cleansing, a way to reset her cognitive faculties and return to her judicial duties with renewed focus and energy.
The period during which Ginsburg served on the Court also witnessed a dramatic increase in political polarization throughout American society. Washington became increasingly divided along partisan lines, with ideological battles growing more intense and personal with each passing year. The Supreme Court itself became a focal point of these conflicts, with nominees facing increasingly contentious confirmation battles and decisions being analyzed primarily through partisan lenses. In this environment, finding common ground across ideological divides became progressively more difficult.
Yet Ginsburg discovered that the arts, and opera in particular, possessed a remarkable ability to bridge these divides. Her friendship with Justice Antonin Scalia stands as perhaps the most famous example of this phenomenon. Despite being ideological opposites in their judicial philosophies—Ginsburg championed progressive interpretations while Scalia advocated for strict originalism—they forged a genuine and deep friendship based largely on their mutual passion for opera. They attended performances together regularly, discussed their favorite singers and productions, and found in this shared interest a basis for connection that transcended their professional disagreements.
This friendship demonstrated something crucial about the nature of art and its role in society. While political and legal disagreements can seem insurmountable, creating rigid divisions between people, artistic appreciation operates on a different plane entirely. Two people can disagree fundamentally about constitutional interpretation or public policy while simultaneously experiencing identical joy at a perfectly executed aria or a brilliantly staged production. The arts remind us of our shared humanity, of the experiences and emotions that unite us despite our differences.
Ginsburg’s observations about the operatic voice likely emerged from these experiences and reflections. Her statement wasn’t made casually or in passing. Rather, it represented a distillation of years of careful attention to this art form, years of observing and appreciating the extraordinary skills of professional opera singers. She understood that what these performers accomplished required not just talent but also immense dedication, years of rigorous training, and a level of discipline that paralleled her own commitment to legal excellence. Just as she had spent decades mastering the intricacies of constitutional law, these singers had devoted themselves to mastering their instruments—their own bodies and voices.
To fully appreciate Ginsburg’s observation about the uniqueness of the operatic voice, one must understand the remarkable technical achievement that operatic singing represents. Unlike virtually every other form of vocal performance in the modern world, opera singers must project their voices across large theaters, reaching audiences of thousands, while competing acoustically with full orchestras that can include dozens of instruments. They accomplish this feat without any electronic amplification whatsoever—no microphones, no speakers, no sound systems of any kind.
This represents a genuinely extraordinary physical accomplishment. The human voice, in its natural state, is not particularly loud compared to musical instruments. A violin, trumpet, or timpani can easily overpower an untrained voice. Yet opera singers, through years of dedicated training, learn to manipulate their vocal apparatus in ways that dramatically increase both volume and carrying power. They develop the ability to create what vocal pedagogues call “resonance,” learning to use the natural cavities in their heads, chests, and throats as amplification chambers. This allows them to produce sound that can cut through orchestral texture and reach the furthest corners of an opera house.
The science behind this capability is genuinely fascinating. Research conducted by acoustics experts has revealed that opera singers develop a distinctive vocal quality characterized by what’s known as the “singer’s formant”—a concentration of acoustic energy in the frequency range around 2800-3200 Hz. This frequency range happens to be one where orchestral instruments produce relatively less sound, creating an acoustic “window” through which the voice can project. Additionally, this frequency range is one to which the human ear is particularly sensitive, making voices with this quality especially easy to hear and distinguish.
Achieving this vocal quality requires extraordinary control over numerous aspects of the vocal mechanism. Singers must learn to manage their breath support with incredible precision, using the diaphragm and intercostal muscles to maintain steady, controlled airflow. They must position their larynx optimally, neither too high nor too low, to create the right balance of vocal qualities. They must learn to shape their vocal tract—the space extending from the vocal folds to the lips—in ways that enhance resonance and projection. And they must do all of this while simultaneously managing the artistic demands of the performance: conveying emotion, articulating text clearly, maintaining character, and coordinating with the conductor and orchestra.
Ginsburg recognized and marveled at this combination of technical mastery and artistic expression. She saw parallels between the dedication required to become an opera singer and the commitment she had made to legal excellence. Both pursuits demand years of preparation, countless hours of practice, and an unwavering dedication to craft. A singer might spend a decade or more in training before debuting in a major role, just as a lawyer might spend years in law school and practice before arguing before the Supreme Court. Both represent the pinnacle of human achievement in their respective domains.
Moreover, Ginsburg appreciated something else about the operatic voice: its direct emotional impact. Unlike the written word, which must be processed intellectually before it can affect us emotionally, the human voice has the capacity to bypass our rational faculties and strike directly at our emotional core. Scientists have discovered that the human brain responds to vocal sounds in ways that differ fundamentally from how it processes other types of acoustic information. Certain qualities of the human voice—its timbre, its inflections, its emotional coloring—trigger immediate emotional responses before we’ve consciously processed what’s being communicated.
This quality held particular significance for Ginsburg given the nature of her professional work. As a Supreme Court Justice, she was required to suppress emotional responses in favor of dispassionate legal analysis. Her judicial opinions needed to be grounded in precedent, constitutional text, and logical reasoning, not in personal feelings or emotional reactions. She cultivated a judicial persona characterized by restraint, careful deliberation, and intellectual rigor. Yet this very restraint created a need for release, for spaces where emotion could flow freely without the constraints imposed by professional responsibility.
In the opera house, Ginsburg could finally allow herself to feel without reservation. She could experience the full range of human emotion—love, rage, jealousy, despair, joy, triumph—through the voices and stories presented on stage. The singers, with their extraordinary vocal instruments, served as conduits for these emotions, channeling feelings with an intensity and purity that everyday life rarely permits. This represented a form of freedom that her judicial role could never provide, and she cherished it deeply.
The friendship between Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia has become one of the most celebrated aspects of modern Supreme Court history, serving as a powerful reminder that personal connection and mutual respect can flourish even amid profound ideological disagreement. These two justices represented opposite poles of judicial philosophy. Scalia championed originalism, the doctrine that the Constitution should be interpreted according to its original public meaning at the time of ratification. Ginsburg, by contrast, believed in a living Constitution that could adapt to changing social conditions and evolving understandings of justice and equality.
Their judicial disagreements were neither minor nor merely technical. They clashed on fundamental questions about the scope of federal power, the rights of criminal defendants, the permissibility of affirmative action, the constitutional status of abortion rights, and countless other issues of profound importance. Their written opinions often directly challenged each other’s reasoning, with Scalia’s majority opinions drawing sharp dissents from Ginsburg, and vice versa. Yet despite these deep professional disagreements, they maintained a warm personal friendship that lasted decades.
Opera served as the foundation and centerpiece of this unlikely friendship. Both justices possessed extensive knowledge of the operatic repertoire, strong opinions about singers and productions, and a genuine passion for the art form that went far beyond casual appreciation. They attended performances together frequently at the Washington National Opera, sitting side by side in the audience and sharing their reactions during intermissions. They traveled together to opera performances in other cities and even abroad. They discussed their favorite composers, debated the merits of different interpretations, and bonded over shared aesthetic experiences.
This friendship demonstrated something crucial about the nature of human connection and the role of the arts in fostering understanding across divides. While their legal and political disagreements remained real and substantial, their shared love of opera reminded them of their common humanity. It created a space where they could interact not as ideological opponents but as fellow enthusiasts, as people united by appreciation for beauty and excellence. This didn’t erase their disagreements or make them any less willing to challenge each other’s judicial reasoning, but it did provide a foundation of mutual respect and genuine affection that might otherwise have been difficult to establish.
The cultural impact of their friendship extended beyond their personal relationship. In 2013, composer Derrick Wang created a comic opera titled *Scalia/Ginsburg*, which dramatized their judicial disagreements and personal friendship through operatic form. The work presents their legal battles as operatic conflicts, with arias, duets, and choruses exploring themes of constitutional interpretation, judicial philosophy, and the possibility of friendship across ideological lines. The libretto includes actual language from their judicial opinions, transformed into operatic text and set to music that ranges from Mozartean elegance to Wagnerian grandeur.
Ginsburg absolutely delighted in this tribute. She attended performances of the opera multiple times and even participated in productions herself, appearing on stage in non-singing roles. She memorized portions of the libretto and would quote lines from it in speeches and interviews. The opera validated something she had long believed: that art and beauty could transcend political division, and that it was possible to disagree strongly about important matters while maintaining mutual respect and even affection.
Her willingness to participate in this production also revealed another dimension of her personality that the public rarely saw. Behind the serious judicial demeanor, Ginsburg possessed a playful side, a sense of humor about herself and her work, and a genuine joy in creative expression. Her appearances in *Scalia/Ginsburg* and other opera productions allowed her to experience the art form from the performer’s perspective, to feel the energy of a live audience, and to participate directly in the magic of theatrical performance rather than simply observing it.
In our current era, dominated by digital technology and electronic mediation of virtually all forms of communication and entertainment, Ginsburg’s observations about the operatic voice carry particular resonance. We live in a world where most music is heard through speakers or headphones, where performances are experienced through screens, and where the unamplified human voice has become increasingly rare in public spaces. Even in contexts where people once sang or spoke without amplification—churches, theaters, public gatherings—electronic sound systems have become standard.
This technological mediation fundamentally changes our relationship with the human voice and with acoustic sound more generally. When we hear a voice through speakers, we’re not actually hearing the voice itself but rather an electronic reproduction of it. The sound waves reaching our ears were created by speaker cones vibrating in response to electrical signals, not by human vocal folds vibrating and creating resonance in human vocal tracts. While modern recording and playback technology has become remarkably sophisticated, capable of capturing nuances that would have been impossible decades ago, it remains fundamentally different from the experience of hearing an unamplified voice in a shared acoustic space.
The operatic voice, performed live without amplification, represents one of the few remaining contexts where modern audiences can experience sound as humans experienced it for millennia before the advent of electronic technology. In an opera house, the sound waves reaching your ears were created directly by a human body, traveled through the air without electronic mediation, and arrive at your ears in essentially the same form they left the singer’s mouth. This creates a different quality of experience, one that many people describe as more immediate, more visceral, more emotionally direct than electronically mediated sound.
Ginsburg’s words have been embraced by advocates for arts education, who use them to argue for the continued importance of live performance and acoustic music in an increasingly digital world. If someone as intellectually rigorous and professionally accomplished as a Supreme Court Justice not only valued opera but considered it essential to her well-being, the argument goes, then surely arts education deserves support and funding in schools and communities. Her example provides powerful testimony to the idea that artistic experience isn’t a luxury or a frivolous entertainment but rather a genuine human need, something that contributes to psychological health, emotional balance, and overall quality of life.
This argument has become particularly important in an era when arts programs often face budget cuts in schools, when music and theater education are sometimes dismissed as less important than STEM subjects, and when the value of artistic training is frequently questioned in utilitarian terms. Ginsburg’s life offers a compelling counterargument: here was someone engaged in work of enormous intellectual complexity and social importance, work that demanded the highest levels of analytical thinking and logical reasoning, who nonetheless considered artistic experience not just valuable but necessary.
Moreover, her example suggests that the relationship between analytical thinking and artistic appreciation isn’t one of opposition but rather of complementarity. The same mind that could parse complex constitutional questions and craft elegant legal arguments could also appreciate the subtleties of vocal technique, the dramatic power of operatic storytelling, and the emotional impact of musical performance. Indeed, one might argue that her artistic sensibilities enhanced rather than detracted from her judicial capabilities, providing the emotional insight and human understanding that complemented her formidable analytical skills.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s legal legacy is already well established and will be studied and debated for generations to come. Her opinions on gender equality, her advocacy for women’s rights, her carefully crafted dissents, and her role in shaping American constitutional law have secured her place in history. Yet her cultural impact, particularly her role in demonstrating the importance of the arts in a well-lived life, deserves equal recognition and may ultimately prove equally influential.
She taught by example that it’s possible—indeed, necessary—to maintain balance between professional demands and personal passions, between intellectual rigor and emotional expression, between the demands of duty and the needs of the soul. Her life demonstrated that excellence in one domain doesn’t require abandoning other interests but rather that diverse pursuits can enrich and support each other. The discipline she brought to legal analysis paralleled the discipline she admired in opera singers. The emotional restraint required in judicial work created a need for emotional release that opera fulfilled. The intellectual demands of Supreme Court service made the mental escape of artistic immersion not just pleasant but essential.
Her observation about the uniqueness of the operatic voice encapsulates this philosophy. It acknowledges something genuinely special about a particular form of human achievement while simultaneously revealing her own values and priorities. The statement is both descriptive and prescriptive: it describes a quality of the operatic voice while implicitly suggesting that we should pay attention to and value such qualities. It’s a reminder that in a world increasingly dominated by technology and artificial mediation, there remains something irreplaceable about direct human expression, about the unamplified voice, about the biological miracle of sound production that requires no external power source or electronic enhancement.
In our contemporary moment, characterized by political polarization, social fragmentation, and technological disruption, Ginsburg’s example offers valuable lessons. Her friendship with Scalia demonstrates that shared aesthetic experiences can create bonds across ideological divides. Her dedication to opera shows that even the busiest professionals need and deserve time for pursuits that feed the soul rather than advance career goals. Her willingness to participate in opera productions reveals the joy that comes from direct engagement with art rather than passive consumption.
The enduring significance of her words about the operatic voice lies not just in what they tell us about opera but in what they reveal about human needs and values. We need beauty in our lives. We need experiences that engage us emotionally as well as intellectually. We need spaces where we can set aside the analytical mindset and simply feel. We need to witness and appreciate human excellence in its many forms, whether that’s a perfectly reasoned legal opinion or a perfectly executed high C. And we need to remember that technology, for all its benefits and conveniences, cannot fully replace direct human connection and unamplified human expression.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s observation that the operatic voice possesses qualities unlike any other form of vocal expression represents more than a simple aesthetic judgment. It stands as a testament to her understanding of human psychology, her appreciation for technical mastery, and her recognition that a complete life requires both intellectual rigor and emotional expression, both professional excellence and personal passion, both the discipline of law and the freedom of art.
Her legacy challenges us to examine our own lives and consider whether we’re maintaining the kind of balance she achieved. Are we so consumed by professional obligations that we neglect the activities that feed our souls? Are we so focused on productivity and achievement that we forget to simply experience beauty? Are we allowing technology to mediate all our experiences, or are we seeking out opportunities for direct, unmediated human connection and expression?
The operatic voice, performed live without amplification, represents something increasingly rare in modern life: a purely human achievement that requires no technological enhancement, a biological capability developed to its highest potential through years of dedicated training and practice. In recognizing and celebrating this achievement, Ginsburg was also celebrating human potential more broadly, reminding us of what we can accomplish when we dedicate ourselves fully to a craft, whether that craft is law or music or any other worthy pursuit.
Her words continue to resonate because they speak to fundamental truths about human nature and human needs. We are not purely rational creatures who can live by logic alone. We are emotional beings who need beauty, who crave artistic expression, who respond viscerally to the human voice raised in song. Acknowledging and honoring these needs doesn’t make us less serious or less professional. Rather, it makes us more fully human, more balanced, and ultimately more effective in whatever work we undertake.
In a world that often seems to value only what can be quantified and monetized, Ginsburg’s passion for opera reminds us that some of the most important things in life resist such measurement. The value of a perfectly sung aria, the importance of a friendship forged through shared aesthetic experience, the necessity of mental and emotional escape from professional demands—these cannot be captured in spreadsheets or justified through cost-benefit analysis. Yet they are real and vital nonetheless, essential components of a life well lived.
As we reflect on Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s extraordinary life and career, we should remember not only her judicial opinions and legal advocacy but also her devotion to opera, her friendship with Antonin Scalia, and her recognition that the operatic voice represents something unique and irreplaceable. In doing so, we honor not just her professional achievements but her full humanity, and we remind ourselves of the importance of maintaining the kind of balance she exemplified throughout her remarkable life.
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