Ebb and Flow at the Met

In his wood-lined, spacious office at the Metropolitan Opera, Sir Rudolf Bing last week played out the last days of his 22-year regime as general manager--declining farewell-party invitations, phoning instructions to his staff, checking on arrangements in the auditorium. One flight upstairs, in a cubbyhole barely big enough for one Valkyrie maiden, General Manager-Designate Goeran Gentele of Sweden prepared to take over next September --negotiating union contracts, lining up repertory, auditioning new singers.

So it goes at the Met these days.

The tide of backstage events ebbs in one direction, rises in another. One might expect that Bing and Gentele confer regularly to compare notes and exchange strategies. But no. When at a performance on the same evening, they sit in different boxes. "Mr. Gentele and I meet once or twice a week in the corridors, waving to each other--and that is all," says Bing. "So it appears that he gets all his information, if indeed he needs any, from the board of directors or other sources. My only source of information used to be the French restaurant across the plaza, but unfortunately, the headwaiter there has left."

Costly Indulgence. Bing does not make things any easier for Gentele than he has to. Before Gentele arrived, Bing scheduled the Met's creaking, embarrassingly shabby production of Wagner's Tannhauser for Gentele's first opening night next September. Gentele quickly changed that: it will be a brand-new Carmen starring Marilyn Horn, with Leonard Bernstein conducting and Gentele himself directing. Bing also spent a probable $700,000 on his swan song, last March's new and spectacularly good production (by Franco Zeffirelli) of Verdi's Otello, when the nine-year-old and commensurately splendid Eugene Berman production was in perfectly good shape. That indulgence (including 100 costly costumes that were never used) will not help Gentele at all in the current labor negotiations he must settle by this summer if the Met is to open.

Their styles of operation are almost as different as the men themselves. Bing, stern and aloof, is a caste-conscious, immaculately tailored autocrat invariably trailed by a deferential retinue, Sir Rudolf to almost everyone. Gentele, 54, hale and smiling, is a democrat in a loose-fitting sports jacket who makes it his business to know everyone down to stagehands and chorus members, many of whom simply call him Goeran.

The regular 1971-72 season ended last week with an extravagant, five-hour operatic gala (top price: $100) arranged, directed and virtually orchestrated and choreographed by Bing himself. On hand were 43 superstars (among them Nilsson, Price, Sutherland, Siepi, Gobbi, Milnes and Domingo) to demonstrate the kind of singing talent brought to the Met during the Bing regime. This was as it should be, for Bing has always concentrated more on big-name singers than on first-rate conductors or enlightened repertory. An hour of highlights from the gala will be broadcast over CBS-TV on Sunday, April 30. On June 30, after the company's spring tour and a three-week Verdi Festival back at the Met, Bing will close the libretto on the second-longest general managership in Met history (Giulio Gatti-Casazza's reign lasted from 1908 to 1935).

It was an epoch-making tenure. In 1950, when Bing took over from Edward Johnson, the Met was verging on the second rate. The music making was lackluster, the existing sets tattered and, with ticket sales sluggish, morale was as low as one of Boris Godunov's sighs. By sheer dictatorial and sometimes arrogant personal force, Bing moved the company from artistic bankruptcy into the operatic black. A gifted fund raiser, though not much of a collective bargainer, he made the Met a vital part of the U.S. musical community again. Starting three years ago, though, Bing's chutzpa began to alienate both labor and the paying customers. Box office sales, once a phenomenal 97% of capacity, were down to 88% last year.

Nowadays Bing is correcting galleys on his memoirs, which Doubleday will publish in the fall and which will give him, as usual, the last word on most of the controversies that have crackled during his tenure. Now 70, he plans to remain in New York to lecture and continue giving a course in theatrical management and production at Brooklyn College. And perhaps look in now and then on what his successor is up to. Says Bing: "I have no doubt Mr. Gentele may make some mistakes. I have made many. I have no doubt he will have many successes. I have had some."

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