Rudolf Bing

Sir Rudolf Bing ( born January 9, 1902 in Vienna, † September 2, 1997 in Yonkers, New York) was for many years head of the New York Metropolitan Opera.

Life and work

Bing came from a long-established Jewish Viennese industrialist family in which, inter alia, Hugo von Hofmannsthal wrong. He completed an apprenticeship as a bookseller at the Vienna company Gilhofer & Ranschburg and Hugo Heller, who also conducted a concert agency, and studied music and art history in Vienna. He began his career as a singer, until he took Carl Ebert 1928 as an assistant at the State Theater in Darmstadt. Both changed in 1931 to the Municipal Opera in Berlin. In 1933 he had to go into exile because of his social democratic persuasion and the threat of persecution by the Nazis to Britain. There he founded in 1934 together with Carl Ebert, Fritz Busch and John Christie, the Glyndebourne Festival and performed it as general manager ( 1936-49 ) to world fame. He put it on the primacy of the Scenic over the vocal performances particular value.

This principle, he remained faithful when he was appointed in 1950 after a two -year stint at the Edinburgh Festival, at the Metropolitan Opera (Met) of New York - a post which he held until 1972. There he was known to burst through even the most difficult occupation decisions about the appointment of blacks Leontyne Price and Marian Anderson or termination of opera diva Maria Callas (1958 ), which he, however, 1965 could undertake again for Tosca. At the same time he resisted the suggestion to perform and modern pieces in the tradition-conscious house, as was its attachment to full stands. By nature he was a creature of habit and correct grand seigneur. 1946 Bing was a British citizen.

In 1971 he was knighted, a year later he retired for reasons of age into private life. In the early years of his retirement, he was still working as a visiting professor at Brooklyn College and at the University of New York, he worked for Columbia Artists Management. After the death of his wife in 1983, the Russian dancer Nina Schelemskaja - Schlesnaja, he fell ill with Alzheimer's. At the instigation of his friend asset manager its closed on his 85th birthday marriage was annulled with the 38-year younger Douglas Carroll, but too late. The mismanagement of his new companion had already ruined him, so that was not even the money available for hospital bills. Bing last lived in a Jewish home for the elderly (Hebrew Home for the Aged at Riverdale ) in the New York City borough of The Bronx and died at St. Joseph 's Hospital in Yonkers.

Awards

Writings

• 5000 nights at the opera. Hamilton, London 1972, ISBN 0-241-02201-0 5000 evenings at the opera. Kindler, Munich 1973, ISBN 3-463-00546-8
• A knight at the opera. GP Putnam's Sons, New York 1981, ISBN 0-399-12653-8 Gala Evening: back at my years at the Met Kindler, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-463-00843-2