Noise merchants take the rap with a dose of opera

A judge has come up with a novel way to punish those who play their car stereos too loudly — he sentences them to a night at the opera.

Offenders who agree to sit in Judge Jeffrey Swartz’s Miami chambers and listen to his favourite operas can have their cases dismissed, avoiding the $460 fine and court costs.

Mr Swartz gleefully doles out his punishment by opera every Monday at his courtroom overlooking the Washington Avenue nightclub strip. His philosophy is simple: "You impose your music on me, and I’m going to impose my music on you."

Most of those brought before him for noise violations are young men stopped with customised car stereos blasting out rap and hip-hop music from subwoofers. He decided how to deal with them after stopping at a red light next to a car playing music so loud that "my car windows were rattling, I could hear the bolts loosening in the engine well".

This week Mr Swartz had two volunteers for trial by opera. He told Gene Tary, 23: "You’re a lucky man, you’re going to be listening to La traviata."

"Never heard of it," said Tary, quickly adding: "But it sounds good."

Joseph Puerto, his companion in the punishment box, said that he was no opera buff, but La traviata had to be better than a $460 fine. "The only time I heard opera before was in a James Bond movie, and that was only for about two seconds," he said.

Mr Swartz, 54, does not choose his opera specifically to fit the crime, in which case he would surely prescribe doses of Nessun Dorma from Turandot for offenders who kept neighbours awake.

Instead he bases his choice on what is playing at the Florida Grand Opera. Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet opens on Wednesday and will debut shortly afterwards in the judge’s chambers.

It does not matter if the offenders enjoy the punishment or not, the judge says. "They either get to appreciate some culture, or it drives them up the wall. It’s a win-win situation," he said.

He does make exceptions. Verdi’s Macbeth is not on his playlist. "It’s too depressing. You need about five Prozacs to avoid suicide." He also refuses to play Bizet’s Carmen. "They’d take to that too easily"