Music: Tired & Happy

The Metropolitan Opera faced an exhausting week. It began when the stagehands, who have worked for more than a year without a contract, failed to turn up for a rehearsal of Bellini's Norma. Members of the office staff sweated over heavy props and managed to get some of the proper lights running.

Grimy and tieless, General Manager Rudolf Bing practiced with the heavy gold curtain, nearly clipped a couple of principal singers with a fast curtain at the end of Act I. The show, he panted, would go on that night without scenery if necessary....

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