Word: tenore
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When Bing took over the Met in 1950, there were all kinds of toes waiting to be stepped on-and he did not miss many. His predecessor, an easygoing ex-tenor named Edward Johnson, had run a tidy if not altogether harmonious house where the terrible-tempered diva and the haughty, naughty tenor reigned supreme. Bing started with a bang by firing 39 singers and several musicians, including his cousin, Conductor Paul Breisach, as well as aging Heldentenor Lauritz Melchior, whose variations on the score had been the bane of Met conductors for years. Amid the howls of "Adolf Bing...
...also worth seeing, he raided Broadway, Hollywood and London for directors and set designers of the caliber of Garson Kanin, Tyrone Guthrie, Alfred Lunt and Cecil Beaton, who were imaginative if not daring. And he has at least reduced the incidence of love duets between a bandy-legged tenor and an overstuffed loveseat of a so prano; only the tones, Bing discreetly has hinted, should be pear-shaped. Significantly, wardrobe mistresses at the Met report that over a few short years the average size of the women's costumes shrank from...
...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 number, went upstairs, knelt in a prayerful attitude before the door and rang the bell. The door opened. A disheveled woman squawked in astonishment. Hmmm, wrong room. Begging her pardon, Bing dusted off his knees, strolled away, found the right...
...Viennese pastry tray of charm. A few years ago, all three of his heldentenors suddenly came down with colds at the same time. Rather than cancel a sold-out performance of Tristan and Isolde, he cajoled each tenor into singing one act apiece. When Bing decides that an aging singer should retire, he eases the pain with a line he has polished to perfection: "Wouldn't you rather have your public say, 'Already?' than 'At last!' " Of course, if the singer won't take the hint, Bing will fire him without batting...
Bing Sting. The ease with which Bing pulls off this kind of frosty switch-about has left some people with a case of the shivers. One detractor described him as having "the look of a man constantly inhaling bad odors which only he can detect." When a tenor called in sick one day, Bing smelled the odor of laziness. Immediately he dispatched an ambulance and two doctors to the tenor's door. "He sang that night," recalls Bing with a wry smile, "and very well too." Some who have felt the Bing sting claim that he has a lofty...