Owen, Richard
Owen, Richard
Owen, Richard, American lawyer, judge, and composer; b. N.Y., Dec. 11, 1922. He graduated from Dartmouth Coll. in 1947 and from Harvard Law School in 1950. He subsequently served as a senior trial attorney, and then was appointed to the bench by President Nixon to the U.S. District Court in N.Y. (1974). In between he attended night school at the Mannes School of Music, took courses in harmony and counterpoint with Vittorio Giannini and Robert Starer, and attended the Berkshire Music Center at Tangle wood. He wrote several operas deeply influenced by Puccini and Menotti, including Dismissed with Prejudice (1956), A Moment of War (1958), A Fisherman Called Peter (1965), Mary Dyer (dealing with a woman Quaker who was hanged in Boston on June 1, 1660; N.Y., June 12, 1976, with Owen’s wife singing the title role), The Death of the Virgin (N.Y., March 31,1983), Abigail Adams (N.Y., March 18, 1987), and the children’s opera Tom Sawyer (N.Y., April 2, 1989).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire