Rudolph Bing

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Sir Rudolph Bing

Sir Rudolph Bing (January 9, 1902 – September 2, 1997) was an Austrian-born opera impresario. Bing was General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York from 1950 to 1972. He was Knighted in 1971.

Born Rudolf Franz Joseph Bing in Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Empire to a well-to-do and musical family (his father was an industrialist) Bing studied at the University of Vienna and as a young man worked in theatrical and concert agencies. In 1927 he went to Berlin, Germany and subsequently served as general manager of opera houses in that city and in Darmstadt.

While in Berlin, he married a Russian ballerina, but in 1934, with the rise of Nazi Germany, the Bings moved to Great Britain where, in 1946 he became a naturalised British subject. There he helped to found the Glyndebourne Festival Opera and, after the war, organized the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland.

In 1949 he went to the United States, to become general manager of the Metropolitan the following year, a post he held for 22 years. He supervised the move of the old Metropolitan to its new quarters in Lincoln Center and his administration was, by any account, one of the great eras of Metropolitan Opera. It was summed up as follows:

Wielding his powerful position at the Metropolitan Opera with intense personal charisma over two decades, Sir Rudolf Bing ruled much of the operatic universe in autocratic fashion, nurturing young artists and cutting superstars down to size with equal enthusiasm. He oversaw the abandonment in 1966 of the stately but somewhat dilapidated old Metropolitan Opera House and the construction of a grand monument to his regime, the building the company now occupies, which dominates Lincoln Center. And for good or ill, his conservative musical and dramatic bent, predilection for Italian opera and concern for theatrical values yielded an identifiable artistic legacy. [1]

During Bing's tenure, Marian Anderson became the first African American to sing at the house.

After his tenure at the MET, Bing wrote two books, 5000 Nights at the Opera (1972) and A Knight at the Opera (1981).

A widower after the death of his wife Nina in 1983 and without other family, Bing suffered for many years from Alzheimer's disease and was the protagonist of a well publicised cause célèbre when a reputedly unbalanced lady married him in January 1987 and took him to the Caribbean. Eventually an American court declared him incompetent and annulled the marriage.

In May 1989 noted soprano Roberta Peters and others including soprano Teresa Stratas arranged for him to be admitted to The Hebrew Home for the Aged in Riverdale, The Bronx, New York. He died of respiratory failure on 2 September 1997 at the age of 95 at St. Joseph's Hospital in Yonkers, New York.