Richard Owen is a top ranking federal judge who is also a noted composer of operas. He adjudicated the famous case in which George Harrison was sued for plagiarism by Ronald Mack, the composer of “He’s So Fine,” and he carries a gun because he has sent dangerous criminals up the river. Having agreed to be the subject of an interview launching a new series on lives in opera, Judge Owen received me in his chambers on the 26th floor of Manhattan’s federal courthouse. I didn’t know whether to address him as “Maestro” or “Your Honor,” and the décor of his inner sanctum didn’t clarify the matter much at all. As I was ushered into a large, oak-paneled library with floor-to-ceiling books and glorious, panoramic views in three directions, my eyes took in copious mementos of both his legal and musical careers. In addition to the bound court records and legal volumes, there were musical scores and posters from productions of several of the operas he has composed: Tom Sawyer, Sadie Thompson and Mary Dyer. There were the expected autographed photos of political players like New York’s Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and unexpected treasures as well. My heart jumped in excitement when I spotted framed letters in the handwriting of Richard Wagner, Giacomo Puccini and Giuseppe Verdi. Next to that great master’s letter was another, a mysterious and cryptic note from Madame Verdi, the famed soprano Giusepina Streponi. Such a display of operatic and judicial power was daunting to say the least, but Judge Owen’s relaxed, comfortable manner instantly put his visitor completely at ease. He is a handsome, vigorous man in his seventies. But when he begins to discuss his passions — opera, sailing, his family, his newly refurbished courtroom — the years fall away and the enthusiastic little boy who is still very much alive inside of this busy, powerful man emerges through his twinkling eyes and engaging smile. I found I was talking with Huckleberry Finn in judicial robes and cowboy boots.
“The two careers are not all that dissimilar,” Judge Owen said, responding to my obvious query. “They are both theatre. I wanted to be a trial lawyer when I was five, and being a trial lawyer means you are putting on a show, in the courtroom. And I became a trial lawyer. My father, also a lawyer, was a very strong-willed person, and there was never any question that I was going to be a lawyer, too. I grew up in Bronxville and started going to the Met with my father when I was a small child. La Bohème was the first opera I saw when I was four. At five, I began to study piano, which I continued in high school, but not nearly as seriously as I now wish. When I got out of law school, I started writing pop songs for the Bar Association shows here in New York City.”
The opera bug firmly and definitively bit Richard Owen soon after. “I began going to modern opera, things done in small theatres here and there in New York,” he said. “It probably sounds immodest, but I said to myself, ‘Gee, I can do better than that!’”
In order to accomplish his new goal, Owen began informally attending night classes in composition at the New York College of Music and studying privately with Maestro Vittorio Gianini, who told him in 1960 that he would never be able to write what he wanted without conservatory training. His attempt to register at Juilliard was thwarted by the school’s requirement that he take a full course of academics, even though he was already a college graduate who had both finished law school and passed the bar exam. Owen was, by then, practicing law with a large firm, and he became a federal prosecutor trying cases for the United States Antitrust division. Ultimately, the dilemma of a proper conservatory musical education was solved when Maestro Gianini began teaching at the Manhattan School of Music and Owen took a three-year course.
Less simple to solve was the prejudice he encountered in the legal profession. “Lawyers working with you want to feel that you are very serious and not frolicking,” Owen said. Clearly, composing operas was seen by the serious as frolicking. “Even when I had my own law firm I had three major clients and I would see to it that they knew all about what I wrote. It was no secret, but out in the trade, generally, it was not something that I would talk about.” This restrictive attitude began to change in the 70s and 80s, and Judge Owen hastened to assure me that his composition never caused him to shirk his legal responsibilities. “The law always came first and whatever time it deserved, it got.” He managed to serve his two demanding masters by being very careful with his time. Consequently, he had to let go of many enticing social opportunities in order to compose his operas. “There was a time when I was regarded as more of a dilettante by other musicians,” Owen admitted. “That stopped about ten or fifteen years ago when I had a sufficient body of work out there, and it was all being performed.”
This impressive body of work consists of eight operas, ranging from brief one-act works for chamber forces to powerful, full-length dramas scored for large forces, soloists, chorus and full orchestra. There are songs and orchestral cycles as well, all written in a musical idiom that critics have referred to as “conservative” and “in a post-Puccini style.” This means that they are dramatic in a Veristic way, are highly accessible to audiences, and have virtually no bel canto demands. This makes them ideal for school and regional performances. Owen has little interest in writing music that will not be heard and then liked by his audiences. He doesn’t write to stockpile works. If a commission should suddenly be postponed or cancelled, the opera goes back into the closet until there is interest in it again. Owen writes his own libretti as well as the music. What, then, draws him to a subject?
“I have a feeling that I can tell moving stories about people of consequence that listeners will be rewarded in listening to. Even Sadie Thompson. Although she is a prostitute, she has a lot of humanity and people care about her. Obviously, the story can’t be about people who are so incredibly successful that there are no setbacks, no conflict. In Abigail Adams they had tragedies with the loss of children…” As to the form, Owen lets the story determine that. “When I get my story and my characters, then I decide how to put it together in terms of spacing. Where is my tenor aria, and where is my chorus, where is my soprano aria and my duet? You can’t just tell a story as a narrative; you’ve got to tell it through the contrast of the sections.”
Most of Richard Owen’s operas have a strong, central role for soprano. It is no coincidence that he is married to a singer, the soprano and voice teacher Lynn Owen who has sung in most of the premieres of his works. They met at Tanglewood one summer when Richard was studying composition and Lynn was singing Magda in Puccini’s La Rondine. “I had written a little opera for the Bar Association and I asked her if she would sing in it,” he related. “She, very smartly, said, ‘Can I take a look at it first?’ No fool, she! Well she liked it and sang it and it was nicely received. To my absolute surprise, it got featured on the front page of the second section of The New York Times. Several years later, we got married.” The clincher of their courtship was not the aria Richard wrote for Lynn, but rather his expertise in directing a rehearsal. “I staged it in the living room and she said it was then she decided I was someone to be seriously considered.”
For Richard Owen, having his personal muse by his side as his life partner is a win/win situation. “Let’s just put it this way,” he said. “If I had not married Lynn, I probably would have stayed a lawyer and written Bar Association shows for the rest of my life. I would not have explored more. In addition, she is in a position to talk up my operas when she is out there in the work place.” This has resulted in at least one actual production. Occasionally, Lynn has a direct bearing on one of her husband’s compositions. “Just before the premiere of Mary Dyer, she said to me, ‘This needs an aria for Mary right here.’ And she was right. I wrote the thing knowing what Mary was thinking, but without many of the specific words. Lynn looked at what I had written and declared that she wasn’t going to sing those words. I said, ‘OK, honey, here’s a pad and pencil.’ So she rewrote about 40 percent of the text.”
His melodies come to him in his wife’s voice and he writes with her in mind. “That can be a problem sometimes,” he declares, “because not everybody has that voice. I don’t want my operas to be too hard to be sung well. For this reason, the role of Sadie Thompson doesn’t go higher than a B flat.” Owen puts a tape on the stereo and the chamber is filled with a hoch dramatiche voice of perfect clarity, enormous warmth and color. It is Lynn Owen singing a soaring aria, the letter scene from her husband’s opera Abigail Adams. Her talent is so exceptional, her voice so embued with love and humanity, that Judge Richard Owen suddenly loomed in my eyes as a very fortunate man, a man with the additional blessing of being fully cognizant of his own happiness.
The couple has two sons, former boy sopranos now grown, married, and into careers. David, who once sang such roles as Ynold in Pelleas et Melisande at the Met, is now a lawyer. Ricky, having followed his father’s other path, is a professional conductor. “He’s a true musician,” quipped the Judge, “he’s looking for a job.” His chances seem pretty good; on the tape that we are hearing, Ricky conducts his mother and the Attenburg Festival Orchestra with impressive security. The family business, a fascinating and diverse operation, appears to be booming.
Does Judge Owen have any regrets? “Years ago,” he answers, “I thought of going into music full time. My teacher Maestro Gianini asked me how much time I spent per week on my music. ‘About 20 hours,’ I told him. ‘Then you are doing better than I am,’ he answered. And he told me I’d be a fool to change anything. The only thing I might have missed by staying in law was the chance to promote my operas in the music workplace. I wasn’t out there playing the music politics.” It doesn’t sound to me as if Judge Richard Owen has missed a thing.
