I don’t know, I’m not saying it’s the case but I got the impression that , say Tristan would have only piano rehearsals as it was done season in, season out and the singers rotated anyway quite a bit.

A major revival would be another matter. Particularly the very rare new productions.

Does anyone know to what extent operas were reheared in the Johnson years?

As I mentioned, Kolodin’s History of the MEtropolitan Opera has hundreds of pages of intense detail. And from the 1930s on, much of the performance commentary is first hand from Kolodin himself. (He mentions that a period in the early 40s had limited coverage because he was in active service)

Why? That was long after Bing had banished her from the Met.”

True, but also by the time Steber did her gig at the Baths (1973) Bing was also retired from the Met.

Bing mellowed to the point of appearing in a non singing role in the NYCO production of Henze’s The Young Lord in the mid 70s.

Tenoredigrazia–yes, indeed.

From his second auto-biography, he eventually came to be on very good terms with Callas – their correspondence was very friendly when he was trying to get her back at the Met in a double bill: Poulenc’s La voix humaine and as an actress in Richard’s Strauss Joseph Legend ballet, opposite Nureyev. He admitted it would be a short evening but that getting Callas twice, once opposite Nureyev, should be enough for the public.

I understand Roberta Peters also visited him several times during his last years.

Bing had plans to hire Furtwangler – once the board turned him down; the second time they approved, but Furtwangler died before he could come. His Nazi associations had been behind the boards objections. Bing’s objections to those who felt were Nazi collaborators delayed the debuts of Gottlob Frick and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.

Regardless of how accurate all this may be, Bing did take total personal responsibility for what went on the Met stage. Agree or not with him, he tried to do what he thought was the best for the Met. I give him more credit for this than I did years ago because now I don’t see anyone taking responsibility for goes on at the Met. Who in his or her right mind consider reviving Turandot and Norma with Guleghina? Even if Guleghina had said that she would not sing at the Met ever again unless she was given those roles, the Met should have said, sorry, but no. Guelfi as Amonasro?

When a production failed (e.g., Carmen), Bing took responsibility for it. When a conductor proved unacceptable (e.g., Amaducci), he took responsibility for it. He did not point fingers at others, nor did he blame the audience for its conservative taste.

Or at the very least chafed.

If I knew how to contact off-blog, I’d say guess, and I’ll let you know if you get it right!

Melchior and Traubel were seriously undisciplined. They refused to rehearse, and in Traubel’s book St. Louis Woman she delights in telling stories of extremely unprofessional behavior they engaged in during performances. Bing had been brought to the MET at the end of the Edward Johnson regime specifically to be a much-needed new broom and it was a job from which he did not shrink.

He claims in one of his books that he really admired Callas. I think she could have eventually had anything she wanted but she arrived at the MET at a time when things were beginning to come apart for her. She was opting out of Macbeth engagements and becoming very difficult to deal with. She was gone before she ever really got established. On the other hand, Nilsson rarely canceled, Gabriella Tucci was a rock of dependability–both got a lot of things because he could count on them.

He stood by Rysanek during a major vocal crisis because he believed in her and because she gave everything she had when performing. Their joint reward was when she got it together and became one of the most astonishing singers of the second half of the 20th century. Bing liked that. And there were a lot of singers who liked Bing. Nilsson knew–in one interview she said that there were a lot of people who complained bitterly about Bing but that they’d come to miss him very much when he was gone. And boy–did they!

Why? That was long after Bing had banished her from the Met.

Did you mean “a cute sense of decorum”? I mean Bing’s habitually sucking off the ushers might have offended the truly acute sense of some.

[Bing] was very supportive of Lucine Amara, even losing Solti’s services as a conductor in support of Amara. She was very, very useful to him though and that may have been part of it.

Bing was also making a point to Solti that conductors didn’t get to overrule him on casting (Solti wanted Claire Watson, while Bing knew that he owed Amara a new production in return for her loyal service). Backing down would have set a precedent that other guest conductors would have pounced on.

figaroindy, I think I may be able to guess who your teacher was! I was a music grad student there through the 1970s, and knew a number of Harshaw and Farrell students.

I hoped someone would mention Traubel’s favored designer, Adrian. Most of the posed photos of her in Wagnerian roles show his handiwork. He of course also contributed glamorous threads to projects from that camp classic The Women (he really kind of did go off the deep end there) to the original Broadway production of Camelot.

But with one touch of genius. Sharaff confessed that she intentionally cut Taylor’s blouse so it ended in a straight horizontal line just above the widest point of her hips, making her ass look as big as possible.

And don’t forget the great Irene Sharaff, who won the Oscar for her splendiferous costumes for “Virginia Woolf!”

http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0064100/