Word: chapin
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Such are the telltale signs that Schuyler Chapin has brought an energetic and affable new presence to the job of general manager of the Metropolitan Opera. A onetime composition student, Chapin has experience as a supervisor of classical recordings for the Columbia label and as a chief of programming for Manhattan's Lincoln Center. Two years ago he was executive producer of Leonard Bernstein's television and film enterprises. Then Sir Rudolf Bing's successor as the Met's general manager, Goran Gentele, named Chapin as his assistant, although Chapin had never before held...
...necessity, much of what Chapin has done since then has consisted of filling in outlines sketched by Gentele. But Chapin's personal signature has begun to appear. After Gentele's death, the Met board and staff assumed that plans for a Mini-Met (see previous story) would have to be put off for a year. It was Chapin who pushed for an opening this season, insisting "It is time for the Metropolitan once again to become a leader and not a follower." The informal "lookin" rehearsal performances for students that Chapin inaugurated were Gentele's idea...
...Chapin has the easy manner and confidence of the well born and properly schooled (Millbrook School, New York Social Register}. Thus he has had no trouble nurturing the open, first-name style introduced by Gentele throughout the company-from the $4,000-a-performance stars down to the stagehands. "For the first time in years, people at the Met enjoy their work," says Tenor George Shirley. "Now you feel that your problems will be listened to and that changes will be made...
...Chapin works seven days a week, usually beginning at 9 a.m. and going until midnight, with time off only for a half-hour nap around 5 p.m. and for dinner at the Met with his wife Betty. His first season has included 27 different operas and two new productions. To date, the winter flu and other illnesses have necessitated a record 75 cast changes. "One famous night we had to change three Mimis and two Rodolfos," he recalls with a grimace...
Handicapped. Actually the virus may have been partly responsible for one of Chapin's most popular innovations-the use of understudies to replace ailing stars. In the past a young hopeful's dream of stepping in at the Met often remained a fantasy, since half a dozen transatlantic phone calls would be made to get another singer with a big reputation. This season, however, when the celebrated tenor Franco Corelli canceled, Singer William Lewis was given a chance to sing Romeo -and filled the gap admirably...