Word: bing
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Year Two of the Bing Regime at the Metropolitan Opera got off to a lively start. Most of the critics cheered the new sets and the Margaret Webster staging for opening night's Aïda. Traditionalist Olin Downes-of the New York Times found the spectacle side "far from either the nature of the drama or of Verdi's score." But the Timesman seemed to be an exception, and even he liked the singing. Moreover, whatever the critics thought, a glittering audience, 3,840 strong, had a fine time...
...Ducal City. To General Manager Bing himself, the offstage chime of the cash register sounded almost as sweet as the applause. For the first time in Met history, he had sold opening-night tickets separately, rather than as part of a subscription or series package. The sellout audience, paying up to $25 a seat, plunked a handsome $53,112 in the till. Bing did not rest on his first-night work. Two nights later, he hit the critics and another sellout audience with a second new production...
...Metropolitan's Rigoletto had gone even longer (35 years) without new clothes than Aïida. Bing called in Painter-Designer Eugene Berman, and Berman's bright new costumes and sets were a perfect fit: they satisfied convention without slurring modernity. His solid 15th Century Italian ducal city glowed with faded pink marble and magnificent early Renaissance rooms; his costumes, like Aïda's, splashed with color...
...week's end, Bing had momentarily run out of new productions, but he put on a high-spirited Marriage of Figaro, and introduced a promising American newcomer while he was about it. Cleveland-born Mezzo-Soprano Mildred Miller sang a charming, properly boyish Cherubino, stopped the show with her second-act aria, Voi Che Sapete. It was, everybody agreed, the final bright spot in the Met's sparkling week...
Wobbling Sphinxes. To build the new production of Verdi's triumphal tragedy of the Nile, Bing had brought in the same crack team that gave Verdi's Don Carlo a new glow last season: Broadway's Maggie Webster and Designer Rolf Gerard. They soon found out what everyone from Bing to Conductor Fausto Cleva definitely did not want: "All those wobbling sphinxes, painted canvas temples, unrehearsed supers in ridiculous costumes, and four-footed beasts." They set out to make the new Aïda "as simple and uncluttered as possible...