Word: auric
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Tourists Only. When Auric first took on the weighty title of Administrateur de la Réunion des Théátres Lyriques Nationaux, he took on a ponderous load of problems as well (TIME, April 27, 1962). Mired in a vast swamp of bureaucracy, militant unions and second-rate talent, the state-operated Paris Opera had foundered helplessly for nearly two decades. Five postwar administrators had promised revolution, only to sink quietly into the morass. Some tried staging productions à la Folies-Bergère, featuring flights of ballerinas being hoisted to heaven on wires, madly flapping their arms...
Vowing to change all that in short order or else resign, Auric started boldly by scheduling Alban Berg's fiercely modern Wozzeck. "If I am not able to mount this production," he declared, "I will know that nothing can be done for the National Opera here." He demanded an unprecedented 35 rehearsals, grappled successfully with eleven labor unions (guardians of the Opera's bloated staff of 1,100, including 95 stagehands, 35 firemen, 32 electricians, 30 wardrobe mistresses), but still lacked funds for his crash program...
...Undaunted, Auric, who lives in the shadow of the Elysées Palace, marched across the street to have a word with an influential neighbor-General Charles de Gaulle. "We understood each other perfectly," says Auric, chomping on his cigar. "I just said to him, 'General, I need money.' Then I explained the situation, and everything went off very well...
...slightest detail? Not since the war certainly." Hiking the cost of tickets up to a high of $16 for Norma and brazenly importing big-name, high-priced foreign artists in excess of the legal quota (by government decree not more than 10% of the singers can be foreign), Auric mounted new productions of Tannhäuser, Don Carlos and The Damnation of Faust. After the first two years, critics were heralding...
...still too early to tell," insists Auric, mindful that many of the old problems, such as the regulation limiting rehearsal time to a mere three hours daily, still exist. But despite his caution, the signs are all good. Parisians queued up before dawn to get tickets to Norma, and a black market in seats is prospering nicely...