What I'm Reading

Joseph Volpe's account of his rise to the top at the Met is told in The Toughest Show on Earth: My Rise and Reign at the Metropolitan Opera. I've just started reading it, but doing so brings to mind the two autobiographical volumes by Sir Rudolf Bing: 5000 Nights at the Opera (1972) and A Knight at the Opera (1981). These are wonderful, wonderful reads. They take you from his young life in Austria, his marriage, his time spent in England helping to found the Glyndebourne Festival and the Edinburgh Festival, to the U.S. where he was general manager at the Met for 22 years. These books are chock-full of wonderful anecdotes (several of which involve the unforgettable Franco Corelli) and they, alone, are worth the reading.