AZ Opera hosts Tucson evening with ‘Scalia/Ginsburg’ composer

But he won’t be able to make it to Tucson when the show comes to Leo Rich Theater Oct. 3-4.

So he and Arizona Opera are doing Tucson one better: We get the “Scalia/Ginsburg” composer and librettist all to ourselves in the opera’s “An Evening with Derrick Wang” on Thursday, Sept. 24.

“I, unfortunately, do need to head back east before the performances go to Tucson, but I did want to make time to get to know the Arizona Opera community in Tucson,” Wang said last week from his home in New York.

“An Evening With” gives Wang a chance to talk about his breakout opera, written in 2012 when he was a first-year law student at the University of Maryland taking a constitutional law class.

The opera, whose libretto is taken from actual Supreme Court decisions, retraces the relationship between Justices Antonin Scalise and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, two political polar opposites who found common ground in their love of opera. While they fiercely debated the issues from the bench, the pair were close friends when the robes came off.

We’re gonna stop there and let Wang tell his own story beginning at 6 p.m. Thursday at Holsclaw Hall, 1017 N. Olive Road at the University of Arizona School of Music. Admission is free, but you might want to register at azopera.org to make sure you get in.

Thursday’s conversation will include students from the Marion Roose Pullin Arizona Opera Studio Artists performing excerpts of the opera with soprano and U of A voice professor Yunah Lee, who also will perform excerpts from Wang’s latest opera “Fearless,” about the trailblazing World War II aviator Hazel Ying Lee.

“Scalia/Ginsburg” comes to Leo Rich Theater, 260 S. Church Ave., for performances at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 3 and 2 p.m. Oct. 4. Tickets and details at azopera.org.