Ruth Bader Ginsburg will follow in some famous footsteps in Donizetti’s Daughter of the Regiment.

As the US presidential race livens up, one of the hotter election issues is who will get to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court left vacant by the death earlier in the year of controversial Justice Antonin Scalia. You might think that the topic would preoccupy the minds of the remaining eight judges, but clearly not all as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has agreed to appear onstage in a production for Washington National Opera four days after election D-Day.

The role is that of the grand and insufferably snobbish Duchess of Krakenthorp in Gaetano Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment (The Daughter of the Regiment), and on paper at least is strictly a speaking role. Previous actors to tackle the famously scene-stealing role include Hermione Gingold, Bea Arthur and Dawn French. However, the part has been taken in the past by a number of great sopranos in their declining years including Montserrat Caballé and more recently Dame Kiri te Kanawa.

^{Commissioned portrait of Ginsburg in 2000 by Simmie Knox}

Ginsburg will play the role in Francesca Zambello’s production at the Kennedy Center for one night only, and WNO have revealed some of the script changes for which the five-foot wannabe diva has signed up. Observing that previous heads of House Krakenthorp have been people with “open but not empty minds, individuals willing to listen and learn,” Ginsberg is directed to look at the audience before asking if it’s any wonder that the most valorous members have been women?

Considered one of the liberal judges on the Supreme Court, Ginsburg, now 83 years-old, is a 1993 Bill Clinton nominee and a lifelong opera fan. Despite their ‘political’ differences, she considered the notoriously right-wing Scalia her closest colleague on the Court and the two justices were often seen dining together before attending performances at the opera. Indeed, she and Scalia once made cameo appearances in a previous WNO staging of Die Fledermaus as well as popping up in productions of Ariadne auf Naxos.

^{Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia with members of the cast of Ariadne auf Naxos, 1994. Photo by Stephen R Brown}

No stranger to controversy herself, in recent months she was forced to apologise after she criticised Colin Kaepernick for not standing for the National Anthem at sporting events. She was also called out for telling The New York Times that she did not want to think about the possibility of a Trump Presidency and joking that she would think about moving to New Zealand. However, the legal big-hitter is notoriously reslient, having resisted calls for years from Rebublicans to retire claiming that she is in poor health. And anyone who worries she might miss a performance should think again – Ginsburg is considered a trouper who never missed a day on the bench while undergoing chemotherapy back in 1999.

Apparently the Justice declined to play the Duchess in all eight performances citing “a day job and a night job.” However, although reportedly not at all nervous about the prospect of playing such a substantial role, Ginsburg might reflect on the notices received by former British Shadow Home Secretary Ann Widdecombe who appeared in the Laurent Pelly production of Donizetti’s comedy for The Royal Opera in 2013.

^{Former UK Shadow Home Secretary Ann Widdecombe at Covent Garden}

“As an actress, she inhabits more of a twilight zone, somewhere between a creature of the night (old bat), grumpy Lady Bracknell and diminutive pocket battleaxe,” wrote one critic, while the UK Daily Mail remarked on her “mugging, stamping and glaring”, describing her as “endearingly dreadful”, though admitting that the forgiving Covent Garden audience gave her an affectionate ovation.