In late summer 2022 when I was promoted from my nighttime breaking news position to the federal court beat, I figured I would have time to ease into my new role, a position I was set to begin following a three-day holiday weekend.
But on that Memorial Day afternoon, two of my colleagues broke a huge story: the mastermind of the worst public corruption scandal in U.S. Navy history, the military contractor known as “Fat Leonard,” was on the lam. He had cut off his GPS ankle monitor and fled from house arrest in his San Diego mansion.
By that time, the federal prosecution of Leonard Glenn Francis and dozens of Navy officers whom he had bribed was nearly nine years old, but I had little time to catch up on the details of the case. That Tuesday morning, I dove headfirst into the coverage of his escape and the ensuing manhunt.
I took that same approach a few weeks ago when my editor, Kristina Davis, forwarded me an email about a Fat Leonard-inspired opera. Davis had covered the scandal since it first broke open publicly in 2013 and was delighted that we’d reached the stage that it was now inspiring high culture. And so I dove in again to preview the performance, with the invaluable help of the opera’s creators and performers, who taught me that it’s an aria, not a song, and libretto, not lyrics.
On Tuesday night, I attended the performance with Davis and Greg Moran, our former colleague who also helped cover the Fat Leonard scandal for years. A federal judge and another judge’s clerk were also among the 100 or so attendees.
The performance, which included a handful of other pieces performed by the Artonic String Quartet, was hugely entertaining — surprisingly so to me, who knows little about music, classical or otherwise. And it was a surreal experience listening to soprano Tasha Koontz belt out a 13-minute aria inspired by a case our paper has now been covering for more than a decade.
I won’t pretend to be a music critic, a task I’ll happily leave to my seasoned colleagues from the arts section. But if Tuesday’s proof-of-concept performance is indeed the first step toward an entire Fat Leonard opera, like its creators hope, I’ll be sure one day to be there for the full experience.
