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Amidst loud cries of wounded pride and outrage, the new manager proceeded to drop 39 singers, including hitherto sacrosanct Heldentenor Lauritz Melchior, 60, whose wanderings from the score had been the bane of Met conductors for years. There were wild charges that Manager Bing, Vienna-born and German-trained, would try to force even more of the heavy dumpling of Wagner down the throats of audiences that are notably partial to lighter Italian and French fare. (Actually, Bing has little enthusiasm for Wagner.) When he signed famed Soprano Kirsten Flagstad to appear at the Met for the first time since she left it in 1941 to go to her husband in Nazi-occupied Norway, Walter Winchell and others set up a drumfire heard across the nation. Said Bing calmly: "Quality and quality alone is to be the test. If there is to be any shooting for this decision, let it be at me."
After the curtain went up on opening night, the firing diminished. Bing began with a brand-new production of Verdi's Don Carlo, rebuilt from scratch with brilliant new sets and costumes, and staged by bright Broadway Director Margaret Webster. He quickly followed that with an entirely new mounting of The Flying Dutchman, done almost equally well. To make a full season, Bing had to reach into the standard repertory (and the warehouse) for operas he had had neither time nor money to rebuild, e.g., Tristan, Faust, Trovatore, Traviata. But except for Traviata and Faust, which most critics panned, even the old productions came through with some grace. Finally came the success of the brilliant new Fledermaus, restaged by Broadway's and Hollywood's Garson Kanin. Said one beaming and relaxed Met director last week: "We all have our fingers uncrossed now."
Rush the Ambulance. Rudi Bing has not worked his cures by coddling the singers or anyone else. His policy from the first has been "firmness—sympathy but firmness." Says one singer: "Bing is the boss. He knows it and makes everyone else know it." But the Bing firmness is tempered with wit, and even touches of slapstick. One sample last fall: when he suspected that the "illness" of one of his tenors was chiefly laziness, he rushed two doctors and an ambulance to the tenor's door in burlesque solicitude. Says Bing in his caramel-soft Viennese-British accent: "He sang that night, and very well, too."
Bing has also persuaded his singers that the Met comes first. He generally insists that they be on hand for a minimum of ten weeks a season; nowadays, stars who used to drop in at the Met to sing four or five times a year, almost at their own convenience, have passed up concert and radio engagements at $2,500 and up to work with Bing for a $1,000 top. Manager Bing, who lived long enough in Britain (15 years) to acquire a taste for understatement, takes such accomplishments calmly. Asked what he regarded as his biggest single innovation at the Met thus far, he replied with a quick smile: "Tea at 4. Do have a cup."