Grand Opera: The Story of the Met

by Affron, Charles

  On his return to the United States that fall, Bing took a swipe at Gentele’s break with past practice: “A musical director considers himself responsible for deciding repertory and cast, to say nothing of maintaining the quality of the orchestra and chorus. I was not prepared to abdicate. An opera house must be a total democracy run by one man, and one man only” (London Times, Nov. 10, 1971). By the time of this interview, on this point at least, Bing had already been vindicated. The previous month, fully two years before Kubelik was scheduled to take up his duties, the Times (Oct. 17, 1971) had published a long profile of the conductor, replete with his overly frank views on the primacy of the music director and his very own plans for the future of the company. Three days later, Gentele chided Kubelik for the “embarrassing” remarks. In reply to Kubelik’s assertion that “a general manager must run the administration for the artistic purpose which is set by the music director,” Gentele wrote, “You know very well that I was not engaged here as an ordinary administrator but because of my artistic qualifications. I am not going to serve you or anybody but the Met—I hope together with you.” And in response to Kubelik’s statement that “opera is music and the music director is the conscience of the House,” Gentele countered, “Of course opera is music but not only music: it is even theatre. If you don’t stick to that, I think we can never get any great director to work here. Neither Bergman nor Robbins—not even myself.” Kubelik had also spilled the beans intended for Gentele’s forthcoming press briefing: that there would be fewer productions per season, more rehearsal time, and cheaper tickets. He had positioned himself baldly as the lead figure of the troika.

  More friction was to come. The demands of advance planning dictated that Bing schedule Gentele’s first season and as far into the future as 1973–74. Sir Rudolf was therefore in a position to program his successor’s opening night. For that gala occasion he chose Wagner’s Tannhäuser, to general astonishment and to the counterfeit shock of Birgit Nilsson, Gentele’s compatriot: “It’s very strange that Mr. Bing who has never opened any season with a German opera, suddenly takes the oldest production he has in the house and gives it to Mr. Gentele. When I did Tannhäuser in 1965 the costumes were in terrible condition and some of the scenery was practically transparent” (Times, Sept. 12, 1971). Gentele dodged the bullet. The board agreed that Marilyn Horne and James McCracken, signed for the twenty-year-old Tannhäuser, be cast instead in a new Carmen. When Giorgio Strehler, invited to direct the production, could not be located, Gentele took on the job himself, by now persuaded of the wisdom of putting his own imprint on the house. In the intervening months, the original concept of shared governance among the triumvirate, with the general manager as first among equals, was scrapped for a more distinctly hierarchical organization.30

  By February 1972, it was clear that the general manager would be in control both administratively and artistically. He would divide responsibility for the stage with the music director, and reporting to the music director would be a principal conductor. Appointed to the latter post on February 15, 1972, was the twenty-eight-year-old James Levine, who had made his Met debut only the summer before. Levine would devote seven months each year to the company and lead four works a season, including one new production. He would be, as he said, “Rafael Kubelik’s right-hand man, although not an assistant music director—he feels assistants are useless.” He would take on administrative duties when Kubelik was away. The assistant general manager Schuyler Chapin, the artistic administrator Charles Riecker, replacing Herman, and the technical administrator Michael Bronson, replacing Krawitz, would support the artistic team of Gentele, Kubelik, and Levine.

  In the end, tragically, it was not to Conried or Bing that Gentele would be compared, but to Herbert Witherspoon, he too freshly appointed Met general manager almost four decades earlier. Both died just months before their opening nights. On July 19, 1972, on holiday in Sardinia, Gentele and two daughters were killed in an automobile accident. His wife and frequent collaborator, Marit, and a third daughter survived. He had been the official company head for only eighteen days. With what little was recorded of his directorial intentions, with the stark designs of Czech scenographer Josef Svoboda, and with Leonard Bernstein in the pit, Gentele had a posthumous debut capable of holding its own against Bing’s 1950 Don Carlo.

  Schuyler Chapin

  The transfer of power to Gentele’s successor was necessarily a study in improvisation. There was no time and, understandably, no stomach for dispute about who should take over. Opening night was barely two months away. And the rational solution in the circumstance, bringing back Rudolf Bing, was to all appearances unpalatable. Bing cabled board president Lowell Wadmond, “Deeply shocked tragic disaster. If you feel my temporary help useful naturally at your disposal in this terrible emergency,” to which Wadmond replied, “Appreciate greatly your cable and generous offer of assistance. Board appointed Schuyler Chapin acting general manager who is grateful to you and will be in touch in event necessary.” Don’t call us. The stunned Metropolitan directors had indeed assembled the day after Gentele’s death to hear Chapin’s detailed report on the accident, and then to vote on what everyone knew to be a fait accompli. Moore made the offer on the spot and Chapin accepted. At the press conference following adjournment, the board’s action was made public, together with the implausible assurance that there would be no disruption in the Met’s operation: Chapin would carry out Gentele’s well-laid plans for the coming season. No immediate search for a permanent general manager was contemplated; the arrangement was to be open-ended. The next day, July 20, as Chapin was in the midst of briefing his staff for the first time, there was, unimaginably, a second fatality: a stage hand fell through a trapdoor to his death. With that, the inexperienced Chapin, forty-nine, was thrust into the crisis-ridden universe of a Metropolitan impresario. As he described it in his memoirs, “Up to this point my entire professional life had been as a second man. . . . Until this moment I had never been in command, never been at the top, never been the one to bear the ultimate responsibility for the decision-making process.” Chapin had held a variety of positions in the entertainment industry: at NBC, at Columbia Artists Management, and at Columbia Records. He had come to Lincoln Center as one of its vice presidents, he had helped launch the New York Film Festival, and had brought the Hamburg and Rome operas for summer seasons. But he was neither a musician, nor a theater person, nor ever a CEO.31

  A wary Wadmond and a diffident, often dismissive Moore made certain that the reins were tight around Chapin’s authority. From July 1972 to May 1973, when “acting” was dropped from his title and he was granted a three-year contract, Chapin was in the hapless position of performing the role for which he was auditioning. The vaguely complimentary statement issued in conjunction with his promotion made mention of his successful negotiation of new union contracts (the first peaceful negotiations in more than two decades, for which Gentele had earlier been credited) and an increase in box office for the current year and in subscriptions for the year to come. Few were naïve enough to believe that the Chapin appointment would usher in “a new era of expansion and achievement for the Metropolitan” (Times, May 9, 1973). The perilous financial waters in which the Met had foundered for decades were at flood tide. To make matters worse, Kubelik’s contract, as negotiated by Gentele, called for his presence in New York only five months out of the year. And those two realities, the ballooning debt and the absent music director, would soon lead to an artistic/administrative meltdown that would end Chapin’s regime after just three seasons.

  1972–1973. The opening night Carmen, September 19, 1972, offered only a glimpse at what might have been. Gentele’s discussions with collaborators had been preliminary and general: with Svoboda, agreement on stylized sets; with Bernstein, the return to Bizet’s original opéra comique. Assistant director Bodo Igesz, promoted that summer to full responsibility, found no prompt book and just a few annotations in a score. During rehearsals, the principals, Horne i
n particular, expressed concern over the acoustic effect of the designer’s wall-to-wall carpeting. Bernstein could do no wrong. One instrumentalist was quoted, “He makes hard things easy, like Karajan, and he makes old things new. I mean, who else would bother with tambourine dynamics.” The result was an invigorated look at one of the beloved warhorses of the repertoire. The uncluttered sets kept the elemental conflicts in focus, sparing the audience yet another picturesque tour of Seville and its environs. The entire production created “a level of musical drama whose attainment is a new chapter in Met history.” Horne brought the right voice and an engaging sense of humor to her Carmen; McCracken played José with a riveting mixture of obsession and frustration. Deutsche Grammophon began to record the Met production a few days after the premiere, the first such venture in nineteen years, that is, since union wages dispatched record companies to Europe’s more affordable studios.32

  Siegfried (Nov. 17, 1972) was the next new production, a Bing legacy, the third installment of the Salzburg “Ring.” Leinsdorf was no Karajan, Jess Thomas barely adequate in the rigorous title role; Nilsson took heroic charge in the act 3 “Awakening” scene: “the soprano poured waves of golden tone over an audience that had been waiting for some hours for singing of this magnitude.” The season’s three other new productions were staged at the “Mini-Met.” High among Gentele’s priorities had been the search for a hospitable venue for chamber opera and contemporary pieces unsuited to the main auditorium. When the ideal alternative of Juilliard was quashed by its president, Peter Mennin, the Mini-Met found a temporary home at Lincoln Center’s Forum, later renamed the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, which seats around three hundred. Poor acoustics and the lack of a pit (a balcony had to be built above the stage for the orchestra) were flaws that designer Ming Cho Lee could not overcome. Still, Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Virgil Thomson’s Four Saints in Three Acts found their audience; the microtonality and electronic music of Maurice Ohana’s Syllabaire pour Phèdre did not. An anonymous donor and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts seemed to ensure a season for 1974–75. Two double bills, a pastiche of Charles Ives with Miss Donnethrone’s Maggot by Peter Maxwell Davies and Massenet’s Le Portrait de Manon with Chabrier’s Une Éducation manquée, were projected, not for the Forum, but for the nearby Harkness Theater. The plan was postponed for a year, and then canceled altogether, on the say-so, it was rumored, of Anthony Bliss. Hopes for an intimate opera theater went uneasily into the night. In 1985, James Levine insisted, “a second, smaller performing space is absolutely critical to the Metropolitan’s future” (Times, March 3). In 1987, general manager Bruce Crawford contemplated the Victory Theatre on 42nd Street for “smaller productions [that] would offer the Metropolitan Opera the possibility of a thirteen-week season.” In 1997, there were discussions of building an annex to serve Lincoln Center’s several constituents. The odds against a “little” Met are every bit as high as they have ever been and, alas, likely higher.33

  In Chapin’s first season, planned partly by Bing, and then by Gentele and Kubelik, the Met continued to boast an enviable international roster. Norma was sung by Caballé and Fiorenza Cossotto, Peter Grimes by Vickers, Orfeo ed Euridice by Horne, Aïda, Der Rosenkavalier, Tosca, and La Fille du régiment by Arroyo, Rysanek, Sutherland, Corelli, Domingo, Pavarotti, Gobbi, and Milnes—and the list went on. Rita Hunter was on hand as a credible backup for Nilsson in Wagner. Gwyneth Jones and Ingvar Wixell made impressive debuts as Sieglinde and Rigoletto. Sixten Ehrling, Charles Mackerras, and Peter Maag strengthened the conducting staff. The Queen of Spades, the first opera sung entirely in Russian, had as its principals Raina Kabaivanska and Nicolai Gedda, both of whom possessed not only the language, but the style. True, when evenings featured Marcia Baldwin, a comprimario mezzo, as the lead soprano Lisa, and Robert Nagy, Vickers’s overused cover, as Gherman, many wondered who was minding the store. But after all, previous managements had had their share of ho-hum, even dreadful performances. In the main, the casts conscripted by Gentele and Kubelik were up to the standard set by their predecessors.

  Chapin weathered his first season, however shakily. He had been obliged to make good on the hefty bill left behind by Gentele while complying with board demands for ever greater fiscal stringency. As early as January 11, 1973, Moore had questioned the number of new productions projected for the year to come, and this despite the private sponsorship already guaranteed for their support. He was apparently looking ahead and “disturbed by the fact that for 1974–75 no such funds were in sight.” Levine was scheduled to conduct another monumental Met first, Verdi’s I Vespri Siciliani. Chapin would have to go to bat for the upcoming double bill of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and Luigi Dallapiccola’s Il Prigioniero, the latter eventually scuttled in favor of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle. He had to argue for the audience appeal, rehearsal time, and overall expense of the Les Troyens scheduled for Kubelik’s debut.34

  In June 1973, with Kubelik’s long-anticipated arrival finally imminent, Chapin thought it prudent to warn the music director that a dark horizon had replaced the sunny landscape Gentele had painted all those months earlier in luring him to the Met. The deficit at the end of the 1972–73 season, he wrote, would amount to $4.7 million, which, subtracted from the $15 million in total assets (including the appraised value of the 39th Street site), would leave only $10.3 million. At this rate, the Met would soon be out of business. The boardroom was “close to hysteria”; directors harbored the illusion that issues ignored for years could be quickly resolved: “You and I both must remain flexible because if either of us takes an intransigent point of view, we are in danger of sinking the whole operation.” And it went without saying that it would be more difficult to enact the necessary reforms with a music director “who is not here on a daily basis coping with the problems that arise.” In his June 28 report to the board, Chapin expatiated on his message to Kubelik. The detail was this: Every production on the calendar for the coming season, bar none, would be scrutinized with an eye to reducing labor costs. That included Gentele’s prized Carmen: “By removing the [act 1] stairs we free three stage elevators and the labor necessary to build a graduated staircase of ten feet in depth and fifty feet of width. This will not only save on performance crew but also space in storage areas and trucking.” There would be fewer orchestra rehearsals, especially for the core repertoire. The number of choristers would be decreased: for Tristan und Isolde, for example, thirty would suffice, a third fewer than customary; megaphones would enhance the offstage voices. More use would be made of contract artists. As for star salaries, nothing could be done about the weakening dollar and associated increases in cachets. New revenue streams would have to be explored, perhaps Sunday rentals, or special concerts, or added stops on the tour. And why not hurry the media program advocated by Moore? As always, better-coordinated fund-raising would make a difference. But these measures, even taken together, would be too little, too late.35

  1973–1974. In October, as the 1973–74 season was under way, Chapin announced that the scheduled new Don Giovanni was canceled and that there would be no further performances in the city’s parks: “The fact is that the Met is broke. If we couldn’t borrow money we couldn’t mount a season.” Three weeks later, Kubelik made his debut in an unusually complete Les Troyens. If Berlioz profited little from Peter Wexler’s production (“the sets and costumes are excessively busy and rather ugly”), he could hardly have hoped for more stirring interpreters than Vickers, Ludwig, and Shirley Verrett. An additional dose of drama was injected into the first night when Verrett, the Cassandre, was called upon to play Didon as well, in place of the indisposed Ludwig. L’Italiana in Algeri (Nov. 10), a congenial vehicle for Horne’s high-spirited virtuosity, returned after more than a half-century in Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s first Met staging; the rest of the cast and the conductor, Gabor Ötvös, fell flat. A production of Les Contes d’Hoffmann (Nov. 29) was borrowed from Seattle to satisfy J
oan Sutherland; predictably stupendous as Olympia, the mechanical doll, she also made hers the dramatic and lyric music of the poet’s other loves.36

  A month later, the revival of Tristan und Isolde scheduled for January 11 began to unravel. Chapin had engaged Swedish soprano Catarina Ligendza for the role of Isolde and Vickers for his first Met Tristan. In late December, Ligendza bowed out. Doris Jung, her cover, failed to get the nod, and when Isolde was handed off to Klara Barlow, Vickers, who had exacerbated the situation by arriving late for rehearsals, withdrew. Kubelik, in Europe as usual, was unavailable to manage the crisis. All he could come up with was that Mario and Tosca step in for Tristan and Isolde. Leinsdorf, furious at Kubelik’s absence, fanned the discontent. When the dust settled, Barlow was cast opposite Jess Thomas, won praise for her pluck and her acting, and eventually sang the January 26 broadcast with Vickers, who had rethought his earlier stand. Four days later, Nilsson and Vickers sang Wagner’s opera together. On an embarrassing evening during Nilsson’s debut season, 1959–60, three Tristans pleading illness were needed, one per act, to complete the show. As always, Nilsson had taken all three acts in her confident stride. By 1974, she had sung twenty-nine Met Isoldes opposite seven different leading men, some good, some not, all challenged by the ferocious score. In Vickers, Nilsson finally met her match. That single smashing evening served to tell Met audiences how otherwise impoverished were the contemporary Wagnerian ranks. “One would have thought the audience as well as the two principals had swallowed that love potion.” By comparison, through the 1930s, Flagstad and Melchior had been the tallest in a field of giants. Nilsson and Vickers did justice to the musical and theatrical values of the roles as no one else of their generation could. Regrettably, by reason of schedule, of indisposition, and of the peripatetic life of the opera singer in the 1970s, their voices twined only once in the “Liebesnacht” in New York.37