Judith Kaye will be remembered for many things over the next few days, most notably for the simple fact that she was the state's first female chief judge. But for me, I'll always connect her first with the opera.
My discovery of one the judge's passions started several years ago when Judge Kaye was in the NY1 green room, waiting to be interviewed on "Inside City Hall" and we started chatting. We discovered that we both had a deep love for the opera. We talked for a long time after her interview about her favorite performances and what she was seeing that season at the Met.
A few weeks later, I received a call out of the blue from the Judge, inviting me to go with her to see a performance. I already had tickets to that show but we had drinks during intermission and talked some more.
She told me that for years, she and her late husband, Stephen, had religiously gone to the opera, becoming late converts to Wagner and becoming captivated by his Ring Cycle.
They both also held a passion for the New York Rangers and the Yankees but Judge Kaye did not share Stephen's passion for horseracing.
"It was a welcome revelation when I discovered that my attendance was not actually required at the track,'' she told me with a wry smile.
But Judge Kaye had been so badly affected by Stephen's death in 2006 that she struggled to go to the opera because it reminded her of their many trips together to the Met over the years.
Seeing anything by herself could be challenging. So we went together several times and met up at intermission for other performances for which we both already had tickets.
Knowing several ushers by name, the judge was in her element at the Met, quite familiar with some of the more arcane operas in the book. Although she was a huge fan of Wagner's Ring Cycle, she seemed most excited when there was a performance of "Billy Budd" – a favorite among those in the legal profession, including Judge Kaye's friend Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
After a Saturday afternoon performance of Wagner's "Die Walkure", the judge insisted that we go backstage and greet the great Stephanie Blythe, a fellow graduate of Kaye's Monticello High School in the Hudson Valley.
Alas, Blythe had flown the coop but it was amusing seeing the Judge talk her way backstage with me in tow as we sought out a mezzo-soprano in the Met's maze of hallways and dressing rooms.
Following our failed trip, the energetic Kaye airily told me she was walking back to her office at Skadden Arps because she had more work to do.
Sadly, Kaye's work is done and there will be no more trips to the Met because she died yesterday. But there could be no more appropriate place for the Judge's memorial to be held than Lincoln Center – a place where she deserves to be on center stage, getting a standing ovation for a daring and wonderful life. Brava!
Bob Hardt