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...