Word: talentedly
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Plus Side. For their money they get the greatest roster of international talent in a longer season than any other opera house. Nowhere but at the Met, for almost any given performance, could two complete casts be mustered that would boast such operatic deities as Sopranos Renata Tebaldi and Leontyne Price, Tenors Richard Tucker and Franco Corelli, Baritones Robert Merrill and Tito Gobbi, Bassos Cesare Siepi and Nicolai Ghiaurov-not to mention a bevy of most attractive younger sopranos such as Anna Moffo, Teresa Stratas and Mirella Freni...
...gets top talent because Bing is there first, though not always with the most; a few houses, for example in Chicago and San Francisco, in the past have offered principal singers more for a performance; but now the Met's top of $4,000 is on a par with most houses'. Though the state-subsidized houses of Europe do well to schedule a singer a month before a performance, Efficiency Whiz Bing already has most of his 1969 season all booked...
...good conductors, "fossilized" repertory, and "anti-Americanism" in the matter of developing new talent. All of which prompts a weary smile from Bing. He responds, characteristically, by criticizing the critics. "Most of the people in our audience," he says, "have better taste than the critics. They know the operas, the singers, and what they want. They are completely uninfluenced by critics-and that annoys the critics so. We can get shocking reviews and you can't get into the house. Critics should be licensed, like doctors." He does not, of course, suggest that singers should be licensed...
...charge that he discourages the development of new singing talent "at the Met," Bing pleads guilty. "The Metropolitan is no place for beginners," he says. "Let them learn elsewhere-Chicago, San Francisco, Boston. They should sing here only at the peak of their careers. I came after a long climb; they...
...necessary to master an art to become successful at it. There are celebrated singers who cannot hold a note and artists who cannot grasp the essentials of form and color. Then there is Allen Drury, who happens to be a bestselling novelist without much talent for writing. But Drury has a special gift-a reportorial eye and ear for detail and atmosphere, an expertise about political power, and a seasoned newsman's disdain for cant...