I'm a little behind in cataloging my books for the 50-in-365 group. Since my previous entry (book 1/50), I’ve finished four books, and am very close to the end of a fifth. Don’t be too impressed, though. Two of them were audiobooks (11 and 19 hours long, respectively), one of them I began in December, and one of them wasn’t even 150 pages long. Maybe I'll be able to reach my 50 book goal after all, despite school. Well, it certainly won't be “50 classics in 365 days" - more like, "50 books of uneven quality and length in 365 days".
I want to leave a little trail of all my books read this year, otherwise I’m afraid their impact on me will be too ephemeral. I enjoy the process of reading, but the idea of reading as pure escapism makes me uncomfortable. If I’m going to spend so much time reading, as I have done all my life, I should take something long-lasting from each book, or at least exercise my atrophying brain muscles and come up with a rationale for liking (or not liking) a book. I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep this up, especially since I’ve finished nearly five books this year, but I’ve only done one (now two) “reading reflections”. Back in Chinese school, one of our frequent essay formats was called a “reading reflection”, or more literally, “reaction upon reading”. The essays had to be better organized than my ramblings now…
Without further ado… Book 2/50.
Book #2. 5000 Nights at the Opera: The memoirs of Sir Rudolph Bing. Published in 1972 by Popular Library/Doubleday & Company. (360 pages; finished 6 January 2008 <--- I guess I'm two weeks behind...)
Book 2/50 was 5000 Nights at the Opera, the memoirs of Sir Rudolph Bing (1902 - 1997), the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera from 1950 to 1972. I don't usually read memoirs, but Papa Miao, who is very knowledgeable about opera and its history, had been encouraging me to read this book for some time. It turned out to be an interesting window into the world of opera and the politics of opera, things I know little about. It was also a fascinating study of the difficulties facing political refugees from the Nazi regime in Germany. Rudolph Bing was a Social Democrat and his politics were quite contrary to the Nazis’, so he moved to Great Britain in 1934. There, he helped organize the Glyndebourne and Edinburgh opera festivals. After the war, he assumed the position of general manager at the Met, and presided over two decades of significant changes, such as the Met’s move to its current location in the Lincoln Center.
The writing has a very conversational flow, as if Bing is recalling events and following their tangents while leaning comfortably back in his leather chair, occasionally pausing for his secretary to catch up with the dictation. His style is witty, direct, and it certainly conveys the stubbornness of personality that Bing was noted for. There were many clever lines in the book, but unfortunately I didn’t note them (sometimes I put little tabs in pages, but since the book isn’t mine, I decided not too). Leafing back through the pages, here are a few quotes that I found clever or interesting:
In the Dolomite Alps… “Once, as a very young boy… I met Gustav Mahler thrashing through the woods, singing, looking almost demented; and I fled” (15).
“During my last years in Vienna, I fell in love – as did everyone else in the city – with a dancer of the Ellen Tels Ballet; her name was Nina Schelemskaya-Schelesnaya. But I was more fortunate than all the others, for when I left Vienna… Nina promised to follow… She did, and presently we shortened her name appreciably, to Nina Bing” (23). Apparently they had a happy marriage until Nina’s death in 1983. Bing later suffered from Alzheimer’s and lost all recollection of her.
“A thousand aspects of life are involved in theater management. There is no artistic decision that is not at the same time an economic one, no financial decision that does not have bearing on artistic standards – and every decision involves human elements” (35). This quote is almost identical to something the great anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski said about the Kula ritual in the Trobriand Islands. I don’t have any of my anthropology books with me any more so I can’t refer to it…
And, to illustrate Bing’s forthright and witty style (in writing as well as opera management):
“Roberta Peters, very tired, had a bad night in Barber of Seville, and the press flayed us. I suppose I did not make things any better by saying to a reporter that Miss Peters had had a bad night but the Paris Opéra had had a bad century” (257).
“Once, I remember, I made a weary answer to one of these tirades, and Gray [a union representative] snapped, ‘Are you trying to show your contempt for the way I conduct a bargaining session?’ All I could say was, ‘On the contrary, Mr. Gray, I am trying very hard to conceal it’” (272).
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