Voting Station

Rudolph Bing

Please vote to see the next celebrity.

Promoter

The Resume

    (January 9, 1902-September 2, 1997)
    Born in Vienna, Austria
    Opera impressario
    Naturalized British citizen (1946)
    Assistant Manager of the Darmstadt Opera (1928-34) and Municipal Opera of Berlin (1931-34)
    General Manager of the Glyndebourne Festival (1935-49)
    Artistic Director of the Edinburgh Festival (1946-49)
    General manager of the Metropolitan Opera (1950-72)
    Wrote the memoirs '5000 Nights at the Opera' (1972) and 'A Knight at the Opera' (1981)

Why he might be annoying:

    He failed the exam required for university admission in Austria.
    A former assistant called him ‘a martinet, a dictator.’
    He was accused of favoring European singers and ignoring American ones. For example, Beverly Sills was not invited to perform at the Met until after Bing’s retirement.
    He was also criticized for ignoring contemporary music.
    When he was 85, he married a woman four decades younger than him; two and a half years later the union was annulled on the grounds that he was incompetent to enter into a marriage contract due to Alzheimer’s disease.

Why he might not be annoying:

    He was married to ballerina Nina Schelemskaya-Schlesnaya for 54 years until her death.
    His careful budgeting allowed him to expand the Met’s season from 18 weeks to over 30.
    He established a pension plan for poorly paid members of the Met orchestra, chorus and ballet corps.
    He broke racial barriers at the Met by hiring Marian Anderson (1955).
    He arranged for Marc Chagall to paint murals for the Met’s new home at Lincoln Center and to design sets for Mozart’s ‘Magic Flute.’
    He said about working in opera, ‘With all this pressure, amid all these crises, with artists losing their nerves and their heads several times a day, a young man who kept his nerve and his head could make a real contribution.’

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2022, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 19 Votes: 57.89% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 6 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 3 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2014, Out of 12 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2013, Out of 19 Votes: 63.16% Annoying