Word: binge
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...John Christie, Bing found the incarnation of an opera producer's dream - an "art patron who pays, but does not interfere. Not that he simply bought and paid for productions. It was really the Christies who gave the whole thing its tone, and gathered together the people who could appreciate it." In Glyndebourne's six-week season, usually only one or two operas were given in the little 600-seat theater, and Ebert demanded (and Christie paid for) enough rehearsal time to insure that the operas were done to a turn...
...Right Man. John Christie took a liking to the likable, competent Viennese, hired him to work under Ebert and Busch. He found Bing useful to have around. Among other things, Bing thought up some ideas for persuading music lovers to travel 60 miles from London into the Sussex countryside to enjoy Mozart. One of them - gift vouchers at Christmas which could be exchanged for Glyndebourne seats- is still in use. Says John Christie, who is proud of having a former assistant running the Met: "He's the right...
...Rudi Bing now thinks of his five years at Glyndebourne as the best of his life. The idyl was shattered by World War II. Glyndebourne shut up shop; Bing went to work in a London department store (Peter Jones in Sloane Square) as a coupon clerk, eventually worked his way up to manager. Technically, he was an enemy alien; he had applied for British citizenship in 1939, but the war had prevented his papers from going through. He was never interned. Moreover, he was able to bring his aging parents from Austria to England...
...Bing gave up storekeeping for good. He saw that Glyndebourne could not reopen on its old affluent basis: taxes had reduced Christie's purse, and austerity made the whole idea out of the question. Bing hit on a solution: if Glyndebourne could no longer afford large productions, it could afford small ones. Young British Composer Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia (TIME, June 9, 1947), which requires next to no scenery, only a handful of singers and an orchestra of twelve, reopened Glyndebourne...
Then came Edinburgh, originally thought up by Bing to create a market for the Glyndebourne company, which was to be the main attraction. One of the most remarkable examples of Bing's tact, competence and persuasiveness is that he managed to persuade the Scots to have an Edinburgh Festival at all. He did it, not by promising it would make money, but, says his onetime assistant and successor at Edinburgh, Scotsman Ian Hunter, by infusing "a terrific sense of idealism about the venture." At any rate, as the 150,000 music lovers who visited Edinburgh last year proved...