Bing's Plans

After sitting on his plans for weeks and enjoying all the rumors, Rudolf Bing this week announced his plans for the Met next season. Showman Bing's biggest news:

P: Kirsten Flagstad will return next season in a role she has never sung before: the title role in Gluck's Alceste (first & last Met performances: 1941). She will sing in English.

P: Mozart's comic opera, Cosi fan tutte (last Met performance: 1928), will be redone from scratch--also in English--with new sets by Rolf (Don Carlo, Fledermaus) Gerard. Stage director: Broadway star Alfred Lunt.

P: During the 22-week season there will also be brand-new productions of Aida (directed by Margaret Webster), Rigoletto and Carmen. The Met will mount 21 operas in all.

P: To "get in on the ground floor" (and earn some added income), the Met is creating a separate television department (under veteran Stage Director Herbert Graf). Operas for TV will be produced in a studio, rather than in the unsuitable Met, with "new staging techniques, maybe some new operas, and maybe some new singers." The Met's TV productions will be sold (Bing hopes) to a commercial sponsor, just like any other TV show.

As expected, the Met is ending its current season in the red, but the deficit should not exceed the one budgeted in the first place: $430,000. The public fund-raising campaign (goal: $750,000) has so far brought in $550,000. George Sloan, chairman of the Met board, called the season "one of the most successful from the box-office standpoint the Metropolitan Opera has ever had."

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