Word: bing
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...Bing made it a point not to appear personally friendly with the artists who worked for him. He did yearn, though, to be on better terms with Conductor Herbert von Karajan. Bing brought Karajan to the Met in 1967 to stage Wagner's Ring cycle, and found him "unquestionably the outstanding artistic phenomenon of my later years at the Metropolitan." Friendship with Karajan Bing could not manage. "You offer him a cigarette, he says he doesn't smoke," says Bing. "You offer him a drink, he doesn't drink. Let's have lunch; he never...
Nasty Man. As for the other conductors who worked for him, Bing has a quick quip for all. Stokowski? "He went around the house correcting the way people pronounced each other's names." Reiner? "Not among the naturally light-at-heart." Bernstein? "He wanted us to do Cav after Pag, to give him the final curtain." Szell? "He was a nasty man, God rest his soul. I remember somebody once said to me, 'George Szell is his own worst enemy.' I said, 'Not while I am alive...
...Bing responded to singers in emotional and hard-to-predict ways. In 5,000 Nights, he forgives Tenor Franco Corelli his rages and frequent last-minute cancellations because he is "the incarnation of opera." But the late Jussi Bjoerling, who sang with a lyric grace beyond Corelli's comprehension but who annoyed Bing by his grudging attitude toward rehearsals, is not forgiven his sins-"a very irresponsible artist...
Despite his tiffs with Maria Callas (he fired her in 1959, re-engaged her in 1965 for two Toscas), Bing regards her Met debut in 1956 in Norma as "the most exciting of all such in my time at the Metropolitan." Bing also recalls Callas' husband and manager Battista Meneghini, who insisted on being paid in cash before the curtain rose every night. Callas' fee then was $1,000. "Toward the end," recalled Bing, "I had him paid in five-dollar bills, to make a wad uncomfortably large for him to carry...
...these years Bing and his Russian wife Nina, a former ballerina, have lived in the Essex House on fashionable Central Park South. Although, he says, "I did not live in New York really; I lived at the opera house. Sunday, when the house was dark, I usually stayed in bed." Now 70 and still a British subject (knighted by the Queen in 1970), he plans to stay on in New York for the time being as "Distinguished Professor" at Brooklyn College (salary: $36,275; at the Met he earned $100,000), giving two courses in opera management. At the last...