The long-awaited memoirs of the man who, for twenty-three years, was general manager of the Metropolitan Opera House. Here, Sir Rudolf Bing tells all, and he names names.

With wit, with style, sometimes with anger, Sir Rudolf takes the reader into the heady world of opera and into some backstage dramas the audience never sees (he gives details of his celebrated feuds with Maria Callas and others).

Sir Rudolf begins with his early years in Austria, where he first got a taste of the "business" of music which led, almost by accident, to his association with the eccentric British millionaire, John Christy, and the Glynde-bourne Festival, and ultimately to the Edinburgh Music Festival (which Sir Rudolf founded). He then moves on to his years as boss of the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Sir Rudolf describes what he found when he first visited the Met: stars who refused to rehearse and a company in a deplorable state of disarray. He writes of his clashes with members of the Met's board of directors, with sopranos, tenors, conductors, stage directors, labor leaders, and the press. He tells of the growing need for a new house and of the move to Lincoln Center ("the first year at Lincoln Center was one disaster after another") and carries the story right up to his retirement at the end of the 1971-1972 season.

Here is a very special glimpse into life in an opera house--the often tumultuous emotions that lie behind the color and spectacle of the stage, the often surprising things the great voices say when not raised in thrilling song, and the joys, challenges, and disappointments that came to the man, who for more than two decades, set the whole fantastic enterprise in glorious sound and motion.

15cm x 21cm, 360 pages, Hardcover, 1972 (Condition: Good / Fair) 

Condition Definition:
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