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Behind that myth is a backstage world that matches the dream in technological terms. It is a world within worlds, a vast labyrinth of shops—carpentry, electrical, wig, prop, tailor, paint—two ballet studios, 20 rehearsal rooms (three of them as large as the main stage), 14 dressing rooms for principal singers, and hangar-sized chambers capable of storing the sets for all 23 of the Met's productions this season. For the singers, accustomed to the Stygian confines of the old Met, it was like being turned loose in Wyoming; so many of them got lost in the first few weeks that guides had to be assigned to show them around.
The stage area alone is six times as large as the one in the old Met. The main stage, 100 ft. wide, 80 ft. deep, is bordered on the sides and rear by motorized stage wagons. In a dazzling display of sleight-of-hand, the main stage can drop 28 ft. into the subterranean storage chambers and emerge with a teahouse, garden, bridge and cherry orchard all ready for Madame Butterfly's entrance. Meanwhile, the three wagons can be loaded with upcoming scenes and wait to glide into the center-stage slot at the push of a.button. For other effects, the backstage Merlins can conjure up storms and floods, encircle Brunnhilde in flame and smoke, or simply change night into day by unreeling one of two massive 110-ft. by 270-ft. cycloramas. For more subtle moods, there is a space-age lighting booth with 3,000 switches that can say love in a rainbow of shades.
Parchment over Steel. Any man who can oversee and become intimately involved with every facet of such a sprawlingly disparate world, and who can deal with opera singers besides, needs the stamina of a Siegfried, the charm of a
Don Giovanni, and the guile of a Mephistopheles. For Rudolf Bing, it's all in a day's work. At 64, he is the undisputed lord of the manor, and he looks it. Though in physique (6 ft., 139 Ibs.) he resembles a patrician heron stuffed into herringbone, there is an impeccably correct bearing about him that says "Beware: regal and remote." His face and grey-fringed dome, all right-angle turns, are a study in parchment over steel. A Vienna-born English subject, he could easily pass as the British ambassador to Paris—a job that he wouldn't mind having if the Met could ever find 15 men to replace him.
In the weeks preceding the debut of Antony and Cleopatra, Bing worked a 16-hour day instead of his usual 14. He usually started his days with an assault on a pyramid of mail, meanwhile giving orders over his intercom system and fielding rapid-fire phone calls: "Hello. Yes. No. Tomorrow. Fine. Goodbye." Then, dictating memos over his shoulder, he would go off on his rounds, turning up onstage to admonish a stagehand ("Don't smoke on our stage, please"), switching off the lights in sub-basement storage rooms, climbing into the uppermost rafters to check on a special staging effect.
Dropping into one of the three