Word: nilsson
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...physiques have dwindled, psyches have flourished. With so much riding on every note, singers today tend to treat their voices like some strange visitor who, if not properly managed, will suddenly desert them. Birgit Nilsson lubricates her pipes with beer, Eileen Farrell quaffs warm Coca-Cola and follows it with burping exercises, Gwyneth Jones takes hot and cold showers and yawns a lot. The rage for eating raw garlic is so popular among German tenors (a cashew-sized sliver two hours before performing is supposed to strengthen the heart) that one indignant Italian soprano recently went onstage with an aerosol...
...charge that he sometimes miscasts his operas, Bing says: "Casting an opera at the Met is easy. If you want to do a Lucia, then you know you have to get Sutherland. If it's Turandot, then you get Nilsson. Ah, but if you're trying to cast Lucia in Magdeburg, Germany, and you have six sopranos who can sing it, then you have to know something about music." More reasonable is the complaint that Bing has failed to bring along enough first-rate conductors. He contends that "there are few really distinguished conductors around, but the shortage...
Courtly as he is, Bing never stands on ceremony. In his dealings with singers, he trades on intuition, whether it is in negotiating a $3,000 difference in salary with Richard Tucker by flipping a coin (Bing won) or in putting Birgit Nilsson at ease before a performance by bursting into her dressing room wearing a Beatle wig (Nilsson screeched). The unexpected, the outrageous are among his chief weapons. On a recent tour in Cleveland, Bing desperately wanted to persuade an exhausted Franco Corelli to substitute for an ailing tenor. He went to Corelli's hotel, got his room...
...York State taxes sound like anything but glowing arias, but they muddle through-rather brilliantly at times. "Singers will do anything to evade taxes," explains Bing, "so I have to cope with the names of their dogs listed as secretaries, and of their wives as managers." Birgit Nilsson once paid Bing a double-edged tribute by listing him on her income-tax report as a dependent. At all events, as Italian Soprano Mirella Freni says, "The Met is marvelous experience, a theater where one works with tranquillity in a warm, almost friendly atmosphere without nervousness. In Italy you can feel...
...most prestigious U.S. cinema congress. In a way, the pebble ricocheted. Too many of the far-out films shown at this year's festival tried hard to be difficult but just turned out dull. Too many others were bad jobs by good directors (Bunuel, Bresson, Godard, Torre Nilsson, Varda). Though the sponsors had doggedly previewed 400 films, their efforts failed to turn up enough hits to fill out the festival's fortnight...