Sir Rudolf Bing, KBE was an Austrian-born British opera impresario who worked in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, including as General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City from 1950 to 1972.
14 Facts About Rudolf Bing
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Rudolf Bing was naturalized as a British subject in 1946 and was knighted in 1971, although he spent decades living in the United States, where he died.
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Rudolf Bing then studied music and art history at the University of Vienna.
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Rudolf Bing oversaw the abandonment in 1966 of the stately but somewhat dilapidated old Metropolitan Opera House [which he then had razed] and the construction of a grand monument to his regime, the building the company now occupies, which dominates Lincoln Center.
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Rudolf Bing was followed by Robert McFerrin, Gloria Davy, Mattiwilda Dobbs, Leontyne Price, George Shirley, Grace Bumbry, Shirley Verrett, Reri Grist, and many others.
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Rudolf Bing was noted for his preference for European singers and an apparent lack of interest in some leading American performers.
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Beverly Sills had to wait until after Rudolf Bing's retirement to make her Met debut in 1975, although Rudolf Bing later said that not engaging Sills earlier was a mistake.
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Rudolf Bing is remembered for his stormy relationship with the era's most famous soprano, Maria Callas.
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Rudolf Bing invited Callas to return to the Met for two performances of Tosca in 1965, the year that turned out to be her final season in opera.
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In January 1987, when Rudolf Bing was suffering from Alzheimer's disease, he married Carroll Douglass, a 45-year-old woman with a history of mental illness, who then took him, in violation of a court order, on a 10-month-long excursion to Florida, then Anguilla, and eventually to Italy and the United Kingdom, where she had sought to buy Rolls-Royce automobiles and a helicopter to give to the Pope, for whom she had a fixation.
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In May 1989, Roberta Peters and Teresa Stratas arranged for Rudolf Bing to be admitted to the Hebrew Home for the Aged in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, New York, where he resided until his death.
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Rudolf Bing died from respiratory failure as a complication of Alzheimer's disease on September 2,1997, aged 95, at St Joseph's Hospital in Yonkers, New York.
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Rudolf Bing is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.
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In 1973, Rudolf Bing received the Grand Decoration of Honour in Gold for Services to the Republic of Austria.