Word: bing
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Slouched glumly in his rehearsal seat, Rudolf Bing blinked at the unscheduled little scene on the Metropolitan Opera stage. An impromptu chorus of stagehands was standing among the singers, bellowing Happy Birthday to You, and looking at him. Bing recalled that it was indeed his birthday, his soth. He rose with a reflex smile. "Thank you, thank you," he said. "Those," he added wryly, "were the first words this afternoon that I could understand...
General Manager Bing had been listening to a rehearsal of the Metropolitan Opera's third opera in English this season. The first two, Fledermaus and Cosí Fan Tutte, were brilliant hits, in which almost every word came through clearly. But after listening to his singers maim a new translation of Puccini's one-act comic opera, Gianni Schicchi, Bing was about ready to concede that it might as well be sung in Bantu. In this, as it turned out at the performance the next night, Bing had merely anticipated public opinion...
...Gianni Schicchi was just half of Bing's troubles that night. The second short opera on his double bill was Richard Strauss's lurid Salome, and this time the ear fared better than...
...Manager Rudolf Bing first spotted Hilde Gueden in 1947, when she was singing in Paris with the touring Vienna State Opera. The next season he got her up to his Edinburgh Festival to sing Zerlina in Don Giovanni. Since then she has been busy in Vienna, Salzburg and Milan, but Bing got her to the Met as fast as he could...
...style derived from several of his colleagues. When he belts and writhes a tune, he sounds like Frankie Laine; he uses Frank Sinatra's phrasing and slurring methods; he occasionally adds a few scale slides reminiscent of Billy Eckstine; at times he seems to be contemplating Bing Crosby's nonchalance, as through a dark glass enviously...