Word: fledermaus
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Metropolitan Opera (Sat. 2 p.m., ABC). Die Fledermaus, with Marguerite Piazza, Risë Stevens, Patrice Munsel...
...backstage at the Metropolitan Opera House knew that a surprise was in the making. Only a few -not including the Met's new General Manager Rudolf Bing-had been told the details. Last week, with a gala New Year's Eve audience settled in their seats for Fledermaus, the Met's bubbliest new production in years (TIME, Jan. 1), Mezzo Rise Stevens uncorked the surprise...
Waving a ludicrous 18-in. cigarette holder in her role of Fledermaus' bored, bemonocled Prince Orlofsky, Mezzo Stevens strutted center stage, put one foot on the prompter's box and waggled the holder at Box 23 of the Met's Diamond Horseshoe. Then, as Manager Bing winced in his box, she sang a switch on her song, Chacun a Son Gout...
...standard repertory (and the warehouse) for operas he had had neither time nor money to rebuild, e.g., Tristan, Faust, Trovatore, Traviata. But except for Traviata and Faust, which most critics panned, even the old productions came through with some grace. Finally came the success of the brilliant new Fledermaus, restaged by Broadway's and Hollywood's Garson Kanin. Said one beaming and relaxed Met director last week: "We all have our fingers uncrossed...
...Fans for Fledermaus. Now, running the world's No. 1 opera house, Rudi Bing is in his plain, southwest-corner office on the ground floor every morning by 10. He walks to work down Seventh Avenue from his apartment in fashionable Essex House, on the edge of Central Park. He travels home for dinner by subway, returns to the Met and seldom gets home again before midnight. The strain of twelve-hour days has already made Bing look a little more drawn and grey than when he took over last summer...