Richard Owen Sits on Two Benches: Judicial and Piano
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood/And sorry I could not travel both . . . ," the poet lamented, "I took the one less traveled by. . . " Not so Richard Owen '45. But not that he took the more traveled byway - faced with two disparate interests in his life, Owen has managed to travel both roads, and with notable success in each.
Owen is a federal judge in the southern district of New York and a composer who has written, to date, five operas and uncounted songs for voice and piano or voice and orchestra. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he was in both private practice and government service before appointment to the bench in 1974. He is a former assistant United States attorney for the southern district of New York and a former trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, in which capacity he prosecuted the would-be assassins of President Truman.
Early this year he was presiding over the trial of a $4-billion suit brought by the utility that owns the Three Mile Island nuclear facility against the manufacturer of its equipment. During a comparative lull in the proceedings, after the prosecution rested, Judge Owen talked about his dual pursuits, how they came about, and how they fit together.
He just "dabbled in music" as a youngster, he claims. In college, he played the piano, sang with the Glee Club, appeared with a popular combo, and was the oddball who played classical records at the Psi U house. (His education was interrupted after his freshman year at Dartmouth by more than three years' service with the Army Air Corps during World War II.) It was only after he finished law school in 1950 that he became serious about music, and he started studying composing at the Manhattan School of Music.
His first opera, Dismissed With Prejudice, was composed in the mid-fifties; the most recent, Death of the Virgin, based on a painting that hangs in the Louvre and the circumstances surrounding its execution, is to be premiered March 31 by the New York Lyric Opera Company. In the years between, his major works have included a one-act opera, A Moment of War (1958); A Fisherman Called Peter (1965), which has been given nearly 100 performances; and Mary Dyer (1975), a three-act opera based on a 17th-century Quaker feminist martyr and called by Music Journal "one of the most noteworthy American operas of recent years." Four fellowships at the McDowell Colony also attest to the critical acclaim for his music.
The Owen establishment in New York City is more than figuratively filled with the sound of music. Lynn, the judge's wife, is a professional soprano who has sung several seasons with the Metropolitan Opera Company; was for two years a leading soprano with the Zurich Opera Company; and has sung, in addition, with companies in Hamburg, Cologne, and Los Angeles.
The younger Owens follow cheerfully in the parental footsteps. David, 14, opened in the role of Yniold in Dubussy's Pelleas at Melisande at the Metropolitan in early January not his Met debut as a soloist, however, that occurring when he appeared in The Magic Flute at the age of 11. Rickie, now 11, is a member of the Met children's chorus and a competitive swimmer.
How does Judge Owen juggle two careers and accomplish that feat so splendidly? "A little robbing Peter to pay Paul," he comments, laughing although his reputation in both fields would discount such larcenous practice. The real secret, he adds more seriously, is "to be a martinet with your time." He works with his music for an hour or two early in the morning before putting in a long day in court or in chambers. "And it helps," he adds, "to have a wife who tells you, 'O.K., dinner's over. Get to the piano.' " He seems blessed with an extraordinary gift for concentration and a capacity to shift gears swiftly as he moves from one task to another. "If I've got 20 minutes lying around, I can go look at a page I was working on the day before and maybe find the solution to a problem."
His two lives rarely come into direct confrontation, but there have been near misses, Judge Owen admits. In 1969, Lynn was to sing the lead in a Zurich production of Richard's opera, A Fisherman Called Peter, which he had agreed to stage himself. Meanwhile, he was appearing as defense attorney in a trial in New York. "The trial lasted longer than anyone expected," he recalls, "and finally the jury came in Friday. I was on the plane Saturday."
The Owens have been deeply involved with the fledgling Maine Opera Association, Lynn as leading soprano, Richard as an unusually hardworking president and chairman of the board. For La Boheme in 1977, he ran the entire production worked out contracts, arranged for sets that could be transported on tour on the back of a small pick-up truck, even sang a part. "At one point, we were all on stage at once Lynn in the lead and the little ones as soloists." Two years as a sort of operatic one-man band were enough. When Lynn sings Il Trovatore this coming season in Biddeford, Maine, the judge will be on hand only as fan and board member.
If, painful thought, he ever had to choose between his two roles, which path would he follow? "Oh, dear, I couldn't honestly answer that. The law means a great deal to me, and so does music. I'm just glad I don't have to choose." But the two pursuits seem perhaps not so disparate in Richard Owen's eyes. Composing without question demands precision, judgment, concentration. "And law is a form of theater," he suggests.
Whether he is poring over a legal tome (above left) or over his own musical compositions (above right), Richard Owen '45 takes what he is doingseriously. Both his legal vocation and his musical avocation mean a great deal to this multi-talented alumnus.
