Grand Opera: The Story of the Met

by Affron, Charles

  Far too many of the new productions were misbegotten. On the second night of the 1967–68 season, austerity was depressingly obvious in the skeletal Roméo et Juliette (Sept. 19). Franco Corelli and Mirella Freni were thrilling as the lovers of Verona—and oblivious to the requisite French style. “In terms of linguistic authenticity, it often bordered on the atrocious, especially where the two protagonists were concerned.” In fact, the French repertoire was poorly served in the twilight of Bing’s regime. There was the ugly Carmen (Dec. 15, 1967) that penned the hapless principals in variations on the Plaza de Toros (“ridiculous . . . awkward. . . . It is disheartening to contemplate the fact that the Met will probably be stuck with this conception of Carmen for the next decade”); the first Werther (Feb. 19, 1971) in sixty years, staged on dreary sets for a miscast Corelli. Appraisals of Der Freischütz (Sept. 28, 1971), withdrawn after a single season, ranged from “entirely conventional” to “full of dated notions of movement and groupings” to “hideous.” Luisa Miller (Feb. 8, 1968), returning to the Met after nearly forty years, was an aural feast in which Montserrat Caballé and Sherrill Milnes honored Verdi and bel canto; Colonnello framed them and the rest of the excellent cast with one of his tired theatrical conceits, onstage spectators in period costume seated in ersatz boxes within the proscenium, a device scratched in later runs of this production. “[The onstage spectators] waved fans, they moved, they stole more scenes than Shirley Temple used to do in her heyday. The trouble was that anyone in the audience with normal peripheral vision picked up their movement and suddenly was watching them rather than the Verdi opera.” The unfortunate 1959 Trovatore was exchanged for Colonnello’s confused and lugubrious 1969 décors (March 6), “a cave-like collection of stalactites and stalagmites” unworthy of Price, Milnes, Grace Bumbry, and Plácido Domingo. The recurrence of Colonnello betrayed the management’s flagging vitality. That critics and audiences had hated his 1964 Lucia mattered little; he was invited back for the grating Luisa Miller, and then awarded the Trovatore to boot.17

  A few shows did the Met proud. O’Hearn and Merrill were in top form in a witty Hänsel und Gretel (Nov. 6, 1967), in an opulent Rosenkavalier (Jan. 23, 1969) that would flatter fortunate Marschallins, Octavians, and Sophies for decades, and in a Parsifal (Nov. 14, 1970) whose serene meadow was an affecting analogue for the mellifluous Gurnemanz of Cesare Siepi. In Gunther Schneider-Siemssen’s iconic Tristan und Isolde (Nov. 18, 1971), the wizardry of the Met’s machinery wrought an ideal stage picture for the “liebesnacht”: the act 2 garden faded into darkness as the lovers, singing of ecstasy and death, were borne aloft and then suspended in the night sky. Zeffirelli atoned for Antony and Cleopatra with Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci (Jan. 18, 1970). The Beethoven bicentenary Fidelio (Dec. 16, 1970), designed by Aronson and directed by Otto Schenk, animated a piece often thought static. In fact, as one reviewer put it, “The sets [were] a drama in themselves” (Post). A rough-hewn, layered, slightly irregular platform focused the action beneath dank prison walls that turned transparent to admit the light of day at the joyous finale. Rysanek and Jon Vickers, arguably the greatest Florestan in modern Met history, led the cast. In this long-lived edition, Fidelio earned a currency it had not before enjoyed—over one hundred performances between 1970 and 1994.18

  The big ticket of the late 1960s was to be Herbert von Karajan’s “Ring,” courtesy of Eastern Airlines, the first corporate sponsor of a Met production. Karajan began to record the tetralogy in August 1966, and then staged and conducted it, starting in March 1967, at the Salzburg Easter Festival, an annual happening created expressly by and for him. That fall there was no mistaking that the de facto Generalmusikdirektor of Europe’s major orchestras and lyric theaters had come to town. In a matter of little more than a month, he bracketed his Met debut by marshaling the La Scala forces for the Verdi “Requiem” and those of the Berlin Philharmonic for Bach, both in Carnegie Hall. He had the chutzpah to demand that the New York production be promoted as the “Karajan Ring.” He insisted that the pit be raised, the better to release a shimmering transparency from his instrumentalists—and the better himself to be seen. Die Walküre (Nov. 21, 1967), the first installment of the “Karajan Ring,” was, for some, although not all, a revelation. The Siegmund and Sieglinde, Vickers and Gundula Janowitz, seemed for once to sing to each other. Even so, there was disappointment: Schneider-Siemssen’s sets, conceived for the wide stage of the Salzburg Festspielhaus, lost a measure of their impact once rebuilt to fit the proportions of the Manhattan proscenium; the smaller seating capacity of the Salzburg auditorium fostered an intimacy all but impossible at the Met; many key scenes played at the rear of the stage put the singers at an aural and visual disadvantage; the pervasive darkness, a Karajan trademark, and the ever-present front scrim shrouded faces and action. Das Rheingold (Nov. 22, 1968) was received with enthusiasm: “ominously magnificent throughout . . . a triumph of subtlety.” No one knew that with this run Karajan’s days at the Met would be over.19

  Nilsson was as crucial a factor as Karajan in Bing’s Wagner equation. The encounter of the two was sure to set off sparks. Earlier and elsewhere, a Stygian environment had made trouble between the conductor and the soprano. She had responded to his cherished penumbra by donning a miner’s helmet during rehearsal, a not-so-friendly prank. Following a series of tortured mediations, Nilsson finally agreed to appear in the 1967 Walküre. No one would sing Brünnhilde in 1969–70; Siegfried fell victim to the strike. When Karajan announced the cast of the upcoming Götterdämmerung, he took the insulting step of replacing the world’s leading Wagnerian soprano with his current favorite, Helga Dernesch. The Met paid the price. Nilsson canceled half of her performances for 1970–71, including the Ariadnes she would never sing in New York. When Bing offered to drop Dernesch, it was too late. The resumption of the “Ring” was put off until 1972–73, the Siegfried in which Nilsson was conducted by Erich Leinsdorf.20

  By the time the imperial Karajan departed the Met for good, the die had been cast for the imperious general manager. Bing’s future had, in fact, “been in doubt for some time” (Times, June 28, 1969). The renewal of his contract for 1969–1972 carried the understanding that the expiration of the agreement would end Bing’s incumbency; he would be past seventy and would have served twenty-two years, five short of Gatti-Casazza’s record. Some months later, Bing was pilloried for the crippled 1969–70 season. New York Magazine had its say in an article titled “The Metropolitan Opera versus the Public.” Under a picture of Bing in forbidding profile, the caption read, “Anachronism within an Anachronism?” There had been no public accountability, no disclosure of the balance sheet since he had taken over in 1950. The blame, according to the writer, lay also with the board that had given Bing carte blanche.21

  The announcement of Bing’s impending retirement did nothing to quell the attacks, and Bing, true to his nature and reputation, shot back: “Nine out of ten reviews that we read—if not all ten—are based on ignorance, and on unfair venom of little people who have an axe to grind, and consider themselves important if they can write badly about someone else.” And then, the final volley: “Fortunately, the public shares my views and the critics have not the slightest effect on our public or on our boxoffice.” Particularly galling to the press corps was that Bing “operated on the principle that he and he alone is in a position to judge how well he has been doing his job.” So when Bing cited as one of his achievements the lifting of racial barriers, Alan Rich saw to it that even this permissible bit of self-promotion was debunked: the Met’s chief was simply in the right place at the right time. “It would be unthinkable for the Met not to have broken the color line some time during the past twenty years.” Rich went about setting the record straight on several other presumptive accomplishments: “It would have been absurd not to assume that the season would be lengthened [from sixteen to thirty-one weeks] and the range of activities broadened. A new house was ordained partly by the magnetism of the Lincoln Center idea-in-the-
sky and partly because of the building realities in the Times Square area. You or I, in charge of the Met from 1950 to 1972, could not possibly have acted otherwise.” This time, a caricature of Bing getting the hook accompanied the piece.22

  With respect to another achievement Bing took as a particular point of pride, his restagings of the core repertoire, assessments were mixed at best. The worst were encapsulated in Newsweek’s devastating summary: “What the Met has lacked above all is taste. In place of taste it has gotten by on lavishly expensive spectacle and glamor. Its repertory has been top-heavy in cumbersome productions that squandered money on costumes and sets.” Critics were willing to concede that a dozen or so of the eighty-eight new productions stood out. There was only partial consensus on the titles of these happy few. The triage seems to us unfairly severe. Our discussions in this and the preceding chapter profess that we would double the number of successes to include many absent from contemporary lists. But we would agree that Bing sanctioned too many clinkers, productions in which misguided décors undercut the score, the libretto, and the artists.23

  Bing fared no better in the matter of repertoire, where, again, he claimed complete authority: “I am solely responsible for the repertory. Naturally I take advice. I listen to some of my colleagues—on both the musical and artistic staffs. And I have to consider innumerable questions. But the final decision on repertory, as indeed on everything else in this house—including casting—is mine. So all the blame for whatever is blameworthy should come to me.” And it did. Conventional programming was laid at the feet of the general manager. If the Metropolitan was called “a museum,” as it disparagingly often was, Bing made lemonade out of the lemons tossed in his direction: “I don’t see it as an insult at all. I think it is one of the Metropolitan’s functions to do the masterpieces of the past as seen through contemporary eyes, and therefore acquaint succeeding generations with these masterpieces.” Of course. But another cardinal function, the propagation of new and unfamiliar works, was slighted. His circumspection was all the more conspicuous in contrast to the much applauded and often successful daring of the neighboring New York City Opera. By way of example, in 1971–72 City Opera scheduled eleven rarities, nearly all of which had recently or would soon become titles closely associated with the company: Roberto Devereux, Maria Stuarda, Giulio Cesare, The Makropoulos Case, Louise, Mefistofele, Le Coq d’or, Susannah, and The Turn of the Screw. That same year, the sole Met offerings outside the core were Der Freischütz (a flop) and La Fille du régiment (a hit).24

  Bing also did poorly when it came to conductors. Reviewing the roll of exceptional guest maestros, Martin Bernheimer felt it his “unpleasant duty to point out that most of these admitted giants [Pierre Monteux, Georg Solti, Ernest Ansermet, Bernstein, Colin Davis, Josef Krips, Karajan, and Claudio Abbado] graced the Met podium for only a season or two, some only for a single production.” Kurt Adler, Jean Morel, Nino Verchi, Joseph Rosenstock, Silvio Varviso, Nello Santi, Richard Bonynge, Carlo Franci, Leopold Ludwig, Gabor Ötvös, and Michelangelo Veltri were “the far less imposing rule” (Los Angeles Times, May 7, 1972). Ubiquitous were the uninspiring Fritz Stiedry, who conducted more than two hundred performances between 1950 and 1958, and the routine Fausto Cleva, who led more than nine hundred between 1950 and 1971. Stereo Review distilled the consensus: that the house conducting staff was the weakest link in the general manager’s armor, and that the reason for the weakness was his reluctance to suffer the irritant of a competing personality on the podium. “Strong-minded conductors and Mr. Bing do not seem to get along.”25

  Finally, even those who judged Bing’s record most harshly acknowledged that he had attracted the illustrious singers of the time to New York. They nevertheless complained about his handling of the stars: he played favorites, snobbishly preferring European artists; he often attributed roles inappropriately; he allowed insufficient rehearsal time. And to top it all off, star salaries had gone through the roof. Although the official ceiling was $4,000 per performance, sweetheart deals were surreptitiously struck with the superstars, Sutherland, Nilsson, Tebaldi, and Corelli: they might be contracted for twenty shows and sing only ten. Perhaps the best deserved of the many grievances was that once the first cast had completed its run, another would be thrown onto the boards with scant if any preparation, subverting the widely touted attention to stagecraft. And there was the other gripe that he had let go some of the most accomplished, if not the most lucrative, artists of the day, Victoria de los Angeles and Cesare Valletti, to name just two.26

  TABLE 14 Metropolitan Opera Premieres, 1966–67 to 1971–72

  By late spring 1972, the gentlemen of the musical press would not have Rudolf Bing to kick around anymore. What they did not know was that Bing would be the last Met general manager to be alone responsible for all administrative and artistic matters. The last, that is, until Peter Gelb.

  “MUSICAL CHAIRS”

  The race to define the ideal successor to the lately knighted Sir Rudolf was on, as was the even more intriguing game of identifying who the candidates might be. Should the Met be looking for an administrator, someone who would make ends meet (as George Moore argued)? Or an artistic personality (as recommended by Zubin Mehta)? An American who would take pride in the Met as “an American institution” (Mehta, again)? Or a person “under sixty so that he can give us at least a full decade” (Moore, again)? Or was all this beside the point? For many, the fundamental question was whether the company should at last have a separate and distinct artistic director who would work alongside an administratively and financially astute general manager. Among the names in circulation were Robert Herman (Bing’s first choice), Max Rudolf (another longtime member of the inner circle), Herman Krawitz (Bing’s aide responsible for business and technical operations), Leonard Bernstein (Moore claimed no offer had been made, while Bernstein insisted he had waved off official and “sub-rosa” overtures), Herbert von Karajan, Rolf Lieberman (head of the Paris Opéra), bass-baritone George London, and board member Anthony Bliss.27

  Goeran Gentele

  Schuyler Chapin, in charge of programming at Lincoln Center, threw three more names into the hopper: Massimo Bogianckino, director of the Rome Opera; Peter Mennin, president of Juilliard; and Goeran Gentele, intendant of the Royal Swedish Opera. The offer was first made to Mennin, who declined. The selection committee then approached Gentele; he cheerfully accepted. His five-year appointment, beginning in 1972, was announced on December 9, 1970. Like Heinrich Conried, an actor, stage director, and administrator, the fifty-three-year-old Gentele had been a hands-on presence as head of the relatively small Stockholm company since 1963; he had staged more than a score of operas in just seven years, all the while tripling government subsidies. He had been much praised for the premiere of Karl-Birger Blomdahl’s science fiction Aniara and for an authentically Swedish Un Ballo in maschera, in which the love triangle was infused with the bisexuality of Gustav III. The Royal Swedish Opera and its head had attracted international attention when they played Montreal’s Expo 67. And most appealing to the media-conscious board president George Moore, Gentele had produced a substantial number of films and several operas for television. Years earlier, Chapin had met with him in Stockholm to request the loan of Ingmar Bergman’s production of The Rake’s Progress for the Hamburg Opera visit to New York. Gentele turned him down with grace and humor, and a friendship was born. A subsequent visit by the John D. Rockefellers cemented Gentele’s connections to the Met. All this led to the insertion of his candidacy into what Chapin called “the Metropolitan sweepstakes.”28

  1971–1972. Gentele spent 1971–72 as an observer, more than enough time for insiders and outsiders to draw the contrast between the outgoing and incoming general managers. Whereas Bing pressed for formality, Gentele urged one and all to call him by his given name; in an effort to attract a younger audience, he discouraged evening wear. If he announced, just as Bing had at the time of his appointment, that he intended to draw exciting directors to
the Met (in Gentele’s case Bergman, Jerome Robbins, and Giorgio Strehler), he also expressed this decidedly un-Bing-like sentiment: that he hoped “to bring about close cooperation with other American opera companies” (Times, Dec. 11, 1970). As for his relationship to singers, “From my point of view, the best way to get in touch with them—to know how they feel and explain things to them—is by personal contact both with the artist and their agents. . . . I think it impossible to negotiate only by letter because what you accomplish by telephone calls would take months of letter-writing.” The chasm between Bing and Gentele opened wide when in June 1971 the general manager–designate declared that, for the first time in its history, the Metropolitan would have an official music director, a position neither Bing nor any of his predecessors had countenanced. His choice was Rafael Kubelik, a self-exiled Czech who had been music director of the Czech Philharmonic, the Brno Opera, the Chicago Symphony, Covent Garden, and Munich’s Bayerischer Rundfunk. Gentele followed up with the news that Schuyler Chapin would be the assistant general manager, whereupon a curious John Gutman invited Chapin to lunch, and then hastened to let the vacationing Bing know that a radically altered organizational model was in the works, a “troika,” as he put it, of Gentele, Kubelik, and Chapin.29