Grand Opera: The Story of the Met

by Affron, Charles

  31. “has as yet”: Eleanor Steber, with Marcia Slota, Eleanor Steber: An Autobiography (Ridgewood, NJ: Wordsworth, 1992), 77.

  32. The broadcast of a singing competition had been successfully tested by the Atwater Kent Foundation radio auditions beginning in 1930.

  33. Beginning in the 1940s and through the 1970s, a vigorous regional opera movement spread from coast to coast. By 1980, each of the cities cited in the Variety article, and many more not mentioned, could claim their own opera company. The Connecticut Opera and the Greater Miami Opera were founded in 1942; in 1945, it was the turn of the Fort Lauderdale Opera Guild Incorporated. The 1950s saw the birth of the Dallas Opera and the Omaha Civic Opera Society; the 1960s, of the Seattle Opera, the Minneapolis Opera, and the New Jersey State Opera; the 1970s, of the Atlanta Opera, the Michigan Opera Theatre, the Cleveland Opera, and the Des Moines Metro Opera. “to mean it”: Texaco to Johnson, April 18, 1941.

  34. “to avert unemployment”: Belmont, The Fabric of Memory, 265. “to develop and”: document of incorporation.

  35. For the Opera Guild’s activities, see annual report, 1936–37, in Opera News (March 22, 1937).

  36. Rudolf Bing had his troubles with the unruly behavior of young audiences. He complained that BB shots had rained down on the orchestra and its instruments and that students had spent their time smoking in the lounges during the student performance of Rigoletto on March 2, 1956.

  37. “big stars”: Earle R. Lewis survey, May 21, 1937.

  38. Ziegler pitched Gianni Schicchi in English in a June 6, 1933, letter to Gatti; Gatti replied on June 28, 1933. The English-language versions of The Bartered Bride and Mârouf were introduced during the spring seasons. The Bartered Bride proved popular enough for inclusion in the regular season.

  39. For contributions to the Metropolitan Opera Fund, see Kolodin, The Metropolitan Opera, 37.

  40. For Tibbett’s veto of Warren for the role of Ford, see Weinstat and Wechsler, Dear Rogue, 64.

  41. “a great triumph”: Ziegler to Flagstad, May 22, 1935. Flagstad sang Handel’s Rodelinda in Göteborg in 1932. We have no way of knowing how much fioritura was retained in this performance. For Flagstad’s preparations for Norma, see Vogt, Flagstad, Singer of the Century, 124–26..

  42. A snippet of Flagstad’s warrior-maid is preserved in the movie The Big Broadcast of 1938. Paul Jackson counts twenty-seven preserved broadcasts of Wagner operas between 1933 and 1940. Since the publication of his Saturday Afternoons at the Met, other performances have surfaced. “the enormous range”: Jackson, Saturday Afternoons at the Met, 105.

  43. Flagstad’s other Tristans were Carl Hartmann (twice) and Paul Althouse (once).

  44. In a memorandum of February 25, 1940, Ziegler lays out Flagstad’s maneuvers against Leinsdorf. “Since Mr. Leinsdorf”: Time (Feb. 5, 1940): 57.

  45. The first two of Wagner’s thirteen operas, Die Feen and Das Liebesverbot, are not likely ever to play the Met, and the third, Rienzi, was presented only by Stanton.

  CHAPTER SIX

  1. “was practically trembling”: cited in Ruby Mercer, The Tenor of His Time: Edward Johnson of the Met [discography by J. B. McPherson, W. R. Moran] (Toronto and Vancouver: Clarke, Irwin & Company Limited 1976), 202.

  2. “in the first”: “Bruno Walter Talks of Liberty,” Opera News (Feb. 17, 1941): 21.

  3. “At the end”: Astrid Varnay, with Donald Arthur, Fifty-Five years in Five Acts: My Life in Opera (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2000), 160.

  4. “after terrible times”: Simon to Villa, May 27, 1933.

  5. The contractual obligations of Italian artists at the Metropolitan is the subject of communications from Gaetano Vecchioti to Johnson, May 2, 1940, and from Johnson to Bori, February 7, 1940. For Schipa and Fascism, see Tito Schipa Jr., Tito Schipa (1993; Dallas: Baskerville Publishers, 1996), 137–41.

  6. “I should indeed”: Johnson deposition in support of Pinza, March 1942.

  7. “aliens who are”: Public Law 831, 81st Congress.

  8. For Belmont on Flagstad, see Eleanor Robson Belmont, The Fabric of Memory (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1957), 275. For the story of Flagstad’s return to the United States, see Robert Tuggle, “Clouds of War,” Opera News (July 1995): 17; and Martin Mayer, The Met: One Hundred Years of Grand Opera (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 227–28. Flagstad sang in opera in Chicago in 1947 and in San Francisco in 1949 and 1950.

  9. For detailed accounts of the Met’s fiscal operations during the decade of the 1940s, see Irving Kolodin, The Metropolitan Opera, 1883–1966: A Candid History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1966), 436, 442, 448–49, 454, 461–62, 468, 476–77, 483; and Mayer, The Met, 219, 223–25.

  10. The minutes of December 11, 1941, reflect the language policy at the Met during World War II: “It was felt that until the public served by the association indicated its dissatisfaction with the management policy with respect to opera that no change should be made.” In a twist of narrative fate, between 1943 and 1945, while Butterfly was banished from the Metropolitan, the Puccini work was unusually popular in Italy. As reported in the Herald Tribune of January 20, 1946, worried Italian parents saw it as a cautionary tale for daughters susceptible to the attractions of the US forces.

  11. “somebody might yell”: Howard Taubman, “Boss of the Opera,” Collier’s (Dec. 6, 1941), cited in Mercer, The Tenor of His Time, 226. “associate itself with”: Wise to Johnson, Dec. 18, 1942.

  12. Feodor Chaliapin (1921–29) and Alexander Kipnis (1943) sang in Russian in the Italian performances of Boris Godunov.

  13. “I cannot accept”: Walter to Zirato, Aug. 27, 1942. Walter made known his refusal of Carmen in a September 22, 1941, letter to Johnson. In a memorandum of January 25, 1944, Johnson records a luncheon conversation with Walter in which the conductor refused Norma and Entführung and expressed his reluctance to be known exclusively for Mozart.

  14. For Szell and the Met orchestra, see Mayer, The Met, 220.

  15. “conductor’s opera”: Oscar Thompson, Sun, August 30, 1941. “monuments of operatic”: Johnson’s report to board after 1941–42 season.

  16. “Men and events”: notes from Walter to Belmont on the occasion of Marjorie Lawrence’s return to the Metropolitan, cited in Belmont, Fabric of Memory, 278.

  17. Otello fell below the box-office average in 1939–40, 1941–42, and 1946–47.

  18. “the Baroque atmosphere”: Opera News (Nov. 20, 1950): 22.

  19. “variety and movement”: Opera News (Jan. 13, 1947): 22.

  20. Minutes of February 20, 1947, reflect the decision to engage Toscanini for Falstaff. “his transfiguration of”: Musical America (March 1949): 5.

  21. For Johnson’s troubles with the board in the late 1940s, see Mayer, The Met, 237.

  22. “The day is”: Report of general manager to board for fiscal year ending May 31, 1942. The long-anticipated postwar arrival of European artists proved to be not a new wave but a passing ripple. Renée Mazella, Hjördis Schymberg, Elen Dosia, and Erna Schlüter ran up a grand total of sixteen Met appearances and were promptly forgotten. The phenomenal Tagliavini, Elmo, and Welitsch came and made memorable impressions, only to leave after a handful of seasons. A decade later, Rudolf Bing, Johnson’s successor, would publish an article titled “American Export: Opera Stars” (Times, Dec. 26, 1954) in which he names Met American artists appearing in European theaters at roughly the moment of his writing: Astrid Varnay, Eleanor Steber, and Regina Resnik at Bayreuth; Risë Stevens at La Scala; Lucine Amara at Glyndebourne; and Blanche Thebom, Leonard Warren, George London, Martha Lipton, and Jerome Hines elsewhere. Americans based in Europe in the postwar era were Maria Callas, Teresa Stich-Randall, Lucille Udovich, Dorothy Dow, Keith Engen, Jess Walters, Nan Merriman, and Claire Watson.

  23. “the frequency with”: Mayer, The Met, 225. “the wisdom of”: Kolodin, The Metropolitan Opera, 495.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  1. There has been no full-length biography of Rudolf Bing. “H
ow would you”: Rudolf Bing, 5000 Nights at the Opera (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1972), 9. Although there were aspirants for Johnson’s position, there were no formal candidates. Aside from Frank St. Leger, the following were mentioned: Lawrence Tibbett, Lauritz Melchior, John Brownlee, Richard Bonelli, and Charles Kullman, all singers, and Laszlo Halasz, general manager of the New York City Opera. Looking back, Bing wrote, “Supporters of Lawrence Tibbett, I was told later, had actually established a campaign headquarters with a desk and a telephone in an office.” Bing, 5000 Nights, 11. For Belmont’s report to the Met executive committee, see Martin Mayer, The Met: One Hundred Years of Grand Opera (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 238. “socially acceptable”: Mayer, The Met, 237.

  2. For Bing’s initial contract negotiations, see Bing, 5000 Nights, 13. “For the first”: John Erskine, My Life in Music (New York: William Morrow, 1950), 236, 237. “ladies”: Belmont’s review of My Life in Music, Opera News (Nov. 27, 1950): 26–28.

  3. It is generally acknowledged that Bing, an avowed Catholic, obscured his Jewish birth. In Howard Taubman’s early profile, we have as direct a reference as Bing made to his origins: “He made clear that he had every personal reason to despise Nazism. When the Nazis came into power in Germany he had to leave, and his family and friends were victimized by them” (“The Curtain Rises on Rudolf Bing,” Times, March 5, 1950). In newspaper accounts of Bing’s appointment, he is mistakenly credited with having directed the Darmstadt and Charlottenburg operas two decades or so earlier. A month after the announcement, on July 3, 1949, a letter from Carl Ebert correcting the record was published in the Times. Ebert’s inference was that Bing had embellished his resumé. On the day Ebert’s letter appeared, Bing wrote to the Times, subscribing for the most part to Ebert’s correction, all the while protesting that the error had been made by the Metropolitan’s press office.

  4. For Johnson’s objections to the press conference, see Quaintance Eaton, The Miracle of the Met (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976), 304. Bing later wrote that he had heard Melchior on a visit to New York in 1939 “looking like a moving couch covered in red plush (though he sounded fine).” Bing, 5000 Nights, 9.

  5. Bing’s message to Tibbett is dated March 8, 1950. For the Warren dispute, see Mary Jane Phillips-Matz, Leonard Warren, American Baritone (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 2000), 181–82. The Associated Press published a photo of Traubel holding the score of Die Walküre together with the sheet music of the “Saint Louis Blues” (Sept. 28, 1953). “Miss Traubel used”: Bing to G. Wendell Hawkins, Oct. 9, 1953.

  6. “he is a”: Bing to Kleiber, Nov. 25, 1950. The exchange between Ruth Kleiber and Bing is dated Dec. 17, 1950, and Dec. 28, 1950.

  7. “conductor-personality”: Bing to Belmont, Sept. 18, 1951. “After all we”: Bing to Belmont, March 2, 1953. Some years later, Leinsdorf took this swipe at Bing: “With ex-Nazis he [Bing] took diverse attitudes according to the artistic interests of the Met. Those whom the opera needed had not been tainted, and all those who were suspect the Met did not need.” Erich Leinsdorf, Cadenza: a Musical Career (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976), 177.

  8. “to open the”: Margaret Webster, Don’t Put Your Daughter on the Stage (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), 204. For the height of the Don Carlo sets, see Rolf Gérard, cited in Lilian E. Forester, “Don Carlo: Duet for Director and Designer,” Opera News (Nov. 6, 1950): 4.

  9. “not the best”: Martin Dickstein, Brooklyn Eagle. “singularly powerful if”: Olin Downes, Times.

  10. In his January 18, 1950, letter to Bing concerning Tebaldi and Rigal, Erede suggests Mario Del Monaco as a possible Don Carlo and, for roles in other operas, Victoria de los Angeles and Maria Callas, the last “a very good Aïda and Norma, Leonora but a step back [from] Rigal and Tebaldi.” Bing navigated the choppy waters of the McCarran Act with characteristic sarcasm. Having given up on Christoff, he quipped, “I have now engaged Siepi who was in Switzerland during the war, so I hope he may be all right; but I have just discovered that in Milan he lives in the via Moscova [the river that flows through Moscow] which strikes me highly suspicious!” Bing to Alfred Diez [agent], Oct. 10, 1950. Fedora Barbieri was detained at Ellis Island. The reason given was her affirmative response when asked whether she had attended a Fascist school. Like all Italians of her generation, she had, of course, gone to school under Fascism. Stignani, whose forty-seven years and dumpy mien kept her from the Met, sang with the San Francisco Opera before and after the War, and in Chicago as Azucena in 1955. “a new standard”: Bing to Del Monaco, Aug. 1951, informing the tenor that his presence at rehearsals was expected.

  11. “The whole present-day”: Mordecai Gorelik, Times, Dec. 5, 1954. “When the curtain”: Robert Sabin, Musical America (Dec. 15, 1950): 15. On Welitsch in Der Fliegende Holländer, Bing to Diez, Jan. 6, 1951: “We agreed jointly that she [Welitsch] should not do Senta after all because I felt in the condition in which she now finds herself she might have risked a severe set-back with press and public and I thought it was imperative, not only in our own but in her interest, to avoid that. . . . [I] would never have done Hollander without Welitsch. Hollander is an unpopular work, but last year’s success of Welitsch made me feel that I could risk it. This year nobody cares about Welitsch at all; nobody asks at the boxoffice for her because she had one or two bad notices and has no doubt disappointed her audience. The cruelty and speed with which the New York public forgets is extraordinary, and, as I said, in this case I think quite unjustifiable.” Only Jeritza and Schorr, in 1931, had drawn large audiences to Der Fliegende Holländer. In the late 1930s, not even Flagstad and Schorr could turn a profit for the opera.

  12. “Fleder-Mice”: Johnson in Cleveland Press, cited in Irving Kolodin, The Metropolitan Opera, 1883–1966: A Candid History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), 492.

  13. “Mr. Bing should”: Rudolf to Bing, Aug. 21, 1950. The Met principals who sang their roles in the Columbia recording were Welitsch (Rosalinda), Tucker (Alfred), and Kullman (Eisenstein). The Met’s Adele, Patrice Munsel, and its Orlovsky, Risë Stevens, sang in the RCA recording. Neither of RCA’s tenors, Jan Peerce (Alfred) and James Melton (Eisenstein), would ever sing in a Met Fledermaus. In fact, Melton was no longer on the company’s roster. RCA, with its starrier galaxy, eventually came out ahead in its rivalry with Columbia. In 1950, it released Rigoletto with Warren, Berger, and Peerce, in 1951 the Reiner-Stevens Carmen, in 1952 the resplendent Trovatore with Milanov, Björling, Barbieri, and Warren.

  14. “If it could”: John Chapman, Daily News. “With it Rudolf”: Miles Kastendieck, Journal-American. Second-string coloratura to Pons’s Lucia and Gilda since her 1943 debut, Munsel had at last found her repertoire and became the company’s star soubrette. Fledermaus propelled her onto the covers of Time (Dec. 3, 1951) and Life (March 3, 1952).

  15. “laughing hysterically and”: cited in Nigel Douglas, More Legendary Voices (New York: Limelight Editions, 1995), 126.

  16. For Broadway, Armistead designed Menotti’s The Telephone, The Medium, and The Consul, and Marc Blitzstein’s Regina. “meaningless detail”: Opera News (Feb. 26, 1951), 6. For Walter on Cav/Pag, see Bing, 5000 Nights, 277. “a bargain-basement”: cited in Mayer, The Met, 245. “find symbols to”: cited in “Lightning in Calabria,” Opera News (Feb. 26, 1951), 7.

  17. “The aftermath of”: Mayer, The Met, 245. “Critics have the”: Bing, cited in “New Settings,” Theatre Arts (Nov. 1951): 90.

  18. For an account of finances early in Bing’s tenure and his conflict with the board, see Mayer, The Met, 254–55.

  19. In a May 2, 1952, communication to Joseph Rosenstock, Bing outlined his objections to the New York City Opera repertoire. “It is just”: Bing to Rosenstock, May 25, 1953. “unfriendly”: Bing to Sloan, Dec. 11, 1954. “Not very long”: Feb. 6, 1953.

  20. “the familiar Bing”: Paul Jackson, Sign-Off for the Old Met: The Metropolitan Opera Broadcasts, 1950–1966 (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1997), 331. Bing wrote to Rudolf on June 28, 1953, regardin
g the Berlin offer.

  21. “professional . . . amateurs”: Tibor Kozma, “Ave Atque Vale—Fritz Reiner,” Opera News (April 6, 1953): 5–6. Downes, 10 Operatic Masterpieces (New York: Scribner, 1952). “No smallest item”: “Worlds of Opera,” Opera News (April 6, 1953): 22.

  22. Bing’s Nov. 14, 1953 memorandum advises his staff to deny tickets to the chief claqueur.

  23. “I think the”: Bing to Reginald Tonry and Lincoln Lauterstein, Nov. 16, 1954. “standing room problem”: Tonry to Bing, Feb. 24, 1955.

  24. An undated “Memorandum of Events Leading Up to Cancellation and Reinstatement of Season 1956–57” is a diary of the negotiations between the Met and AGMA in July 1956.

  25. For the intersection of the Civil Rights movement and the 1961 strike threat, see Mayer, The Met, 303.

  26. “Negro singers”: Met Online Annals, see Rudolf Bing.

  27. “Mr. Ziegler is”: Gatti-Casazza to Kahn, April 20, 1927. “It almost didn’t”: Joe Nash, “Pioneers in Negro Concert Dance: 1931–1937,” in American Dance Festival (Durham, NC, 1988), 11.

  28. “Dusky Harlemites, high”: Time (July 31, 1933): 28. “see itself clear”: White to Cravath, Aug. 17, 1932. For the auditions of Rahn and Brice, see Allan Keiler, Marian Anderson: A Singer’s Journey (New York: Scribner, 2000), 270.

  29. In 1962, seven years after Anderson’s debut, Elinor Harper became the first African-American chorister contracted by the Metropolitan.

  30. “Only recently have”: Ziegler to Arnold Hodas. “Nobody can admire,” April 20, 1950, cited in Allan Morrison, “Who Will Be the First to Crack Met Opera?,” Negro Digest (Sept. 1950): 54.

  31. In the Met version of Ballo broadcast on December 10, 1955, the line “Ulrica, dell immondo sangue dei negri [Ulrica, of unclean Negro blood]” became “Ulrica, del futuro divinatrice [Ulrica, seer into the future].”