Title: 5000 Nights at the Opera Signed EditonPublishing: 1972, doubleday & Co. NYEdition: early printingUnlike the Gilbert & Sullivan irascible character whom "everybody says is such a disagreeable man, and I can't think why!", the controversial former General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera can occasionally think why, but it doesn't bother him a bit. After all, "Only a General Manager can tell Lily Pons she must not wear black tights in Rigoletto". It was during his apprenticeship in the theater in his native Vienna that Bing first recognized the allure of this vocation: ". . .a thousand aspects of life are involved. . .every decision involves human elements". His first opportunity for management was with the opera house in England. The war brought interruptions - and unemployment - but post war he coordinated the Edinburgh Arts Festival and was invited to the Metropolitan. "My dear Bing", warned Bruno Walter, "don't touch it." Then follows an account of what he found -worse than he imagined- and what he changed (staging, equipment, hiring innovations including the arrival of black artists, a financial and budgetary overhaul). But there were ongoing problems: the unions, the politics of Lincoln Center, those "bankers" on the board, and the clamor of newspaper critics (whom he detests) for expensive and fated "new" works (which do not, he insists, make for financial stability or audience support). Bing also strides into his take on the Maria Callas, Nilsson-von Karajan rumbles among others, and offers blithe observations of certain artists - from Melchior in Tannhauser ("a moving couch covered with red plush") to George Szell ("he was a nasty man, God rest his soul"). Outrageously frank, thoroughly charming and disarmingly unrepentant - Bing acts as his own counsel in a prima performance.
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