Word: blisse
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...relaxed, reassuring attitude persists when Levine puts down his baton and attends to the details of running the Met in association with General Manager Anthony A. Bliss. This season, the Met will offer 210 performances of 23 operas during its 30-week season at New York City's Lincoln Center, as well as the 56 performances it presents while on tour in the spring. Notes Kurt Herbert Adler, who was general director of the San Francisco Opera for 28 years until his retirement a year ago: "There are two jobs in this country that are impossible to fill...
During the struggle for power at the Met that followed Sir Rudolf Bing's retirement as general manager and the death in 1972 of Göran Gentele, his successor, in an automobile crash, two men emerged triumphant. Bliss, whose father had been the Met's chairman of the board, became executive director and, later, general manager. Levine became music director. His boyish grin remained undimmed, even during the bitter labor dispute that postponed the opening of the 1980 season; it was, says Sue Thomson, "the closest I've ever seen him to being depressed...
...fact they, more than the gilt and the grandeur, sum up the job and the personality of the man who holds it. Anthony Bliss is indeed the Big Tone, the general manager, ultimate authority on everything that occurs at the Metropolitan Opera. And he is also totally committed to his company, so oblivious to almost everything else that he probably could, as his wife once jokingly observed, dine on Alpo dog food and not know the difference...
...always a big organization, but during Bliss's eight-year stewardship it has become a much bigger one, the General Motors of the world's opera companies. A Wall Street lawyer by profession, with close connections to moneyed New York society, Bliss has brought the practices of modern business management to what is, and will always remain, an artistic endeavor...
...almost every way, managing the Met is more complicated than it was a decade ago. "It used to be that people bought their tickets at the window," Bliss says. "With the advent of the credit card, most of the purchases are on the telephone. Our subscription list too has changed, from a few people buying a lot of tickets each year to many more people buying a smaller number. In the early '50s we had around 8,000 subscribers. Last year we had 28,000. All of this means a great increase in administration...