Word: sir
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...years Sir Rudolf Bing ran a great opera house as if it were his own home. Of sharp tongue and sharper mind, Sir Rudolf tended to every detail at New York City's Metropolitan Opera -- planning the season's repertoire, hiring (and firing) conductors, checking the seamstresses as they worked on costumes. And the divas! Bing did not suffer singers gladly, and prided ) himself on his ability to control prima donnas, cajoling Montserrat Caballe or flaying Maria Callas with equally imperious vigor. In the years immediately following his retirement as general manager in 1972, Bing could still be spotted around...
...Sir Rudolf Bing was spotted in the Caribbean last week, but this time occasionally mumbling "What day is it?" and in the company of a woman with a troubled past. His mind enfeebled by Alzheimer's disease, Bing, now 85, has been living for the past week in a modest two-story bungalow on the island of Anguilla with Carroll Douglass, fortyish, whom he met last year. If she is to be believed, the two are "totally in love" and on their honeymoon; if Bing's court-appointed protectors are to be believed, Bing, a widower and childless, is being...
...Douglass sits in the bungalow's tiny kitchen and talks about hiring a barrister, Sir Rudolf stares into the distance and seems happy enough. He calls her "Carroll sweetheart" but usually talks only when prompted by her, saying a few lucid words before sliding again into a kind of dreamy trance. Sir Rudolf may not be in Anguilla after all, but back home at the Met, savoring a favorite performance of La Traviata or something he said to Maria Callas...
...looking a day older than when he ended his career, Sherlock Holmes celebrated his centennial last week, as well as his 133rd birthday. Confused? It's elementary. Back in 1887, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published A Study in Scarlet, the first of 60 works to feature the world-famous detective. Sherlockians figure Holmes was 33 when the story was published. They have also divined that Jan. 6 was his birthday. That conveniently provided Holmes' exact age -- and a date to launch centennial celebrations this year on four continents...
...sorry sir, he has left the meeting." And so forth. It is not clear if anyone knows what is going on. Bureaucratic channels have become so confused that the Philippine Embassy in New York has to keep in touch via the Minister of Agrarian Reform...