Singing Is Believing

"I'll believe it when I see it," one insider cynically commented on prospects of peace between New York's Metropolitan Opera and the musicians' unions. "Not until they actually get through a whole performance. Even then, there'll be room for doubt."

After weeks of on-again, off-again bargaining, ungentlemanly rancor and disingenuous wrangling, such skepticism was understandable. Yet last week it seemed that the angry artists (orchestra, chorus, dancers and soloists) and the Met management had at last agreed to agree on a compromise. Whether they acted out of real reconciliation or sheer fatigue remained a question.

Locked out last August by Met General Manager Rudolf Bing--because the Met did not want to begin rehearsals until contracts had been signed with the unions (TIME, Sept. 26)--the artists had proved angrier and more obdurate than anyone had thought possible. After the Met's lawyer temporarily blocked their unemployment compensation with a legal technicality, they refused Ring's first (and not notably generous) pay offer. As, little by little, he went up, they began holding out not merely for a better contract, but also for back pay to cover the rapidly mounting number of lost weeks. If it took several months to bring the Met to an acceptable contract offer, it also took all that time and more for the artists to resign themselves to a chilling fact: they would either forgo the back pay or see the Metropolitan destroyed through a deadly spiral of distrust and misunderstanding.

Salvaged Season. The proposed three-year contract calls for increasing salaries to an annual $19,500 minimum for orchestra musicians, $13,400 for chorus and $11,180 for ballet dancers. The package would eventually cost the Met $3,000,000 a year. It would also make the orchestra and chorus the highest-paid in America--though they work longer hours than any comparable group.

Some unspecified wrinkles about working conditions remain to be smoothed out. Flashes of temperamental lightning could still postpone or even wreck the whole proceeding. Nonetheless, both management and the artists have started trying to scrape together a new Met season, and it could get under way either Dec. 29 or Jan. 5.

Just how much damage had been done? As Bing and his aides desperately juggled logistics, it seemed considerable, but far less than had appeared likely during the gloomiest weeks of struggle. Most of the star singers are available, but fitting them into an impromptu schedule will be a computer-size job. The delay has ruled out four fancy new productions: Herbert von Karajan's long-awaited Siegfried, Orfeo ed Euridice, Weber's gloomily romantic Der Freischutz, and a Russian-language Boris Godunov. But the Met's first week will probably open with Aida and Leontyne Price, and there are plans for brand-new productions by Franco Zeffirelli of Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci, along with Renata Tebaldi's Tosca and a so-far-uncast La Traviata. Thereafter, apparently, except for Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Home in a new Norma, the 16 offerings will be familiar.

It will be a patched-up season at best, the result of a patched-up peace. "Bing stood up and took his medicine like a man," one musician grudgingly admitted. "He accepted the responsibility, and he never tried to pass the buck." The accusations and invective hurled back and forth during the bargaining revealed profound bitterness. Even allowing for intense partisanship, the persistent charges of extravagance and administrative mismanagement made against some of Bing's aides suggest that the Met's general manager will need to put his own house in order once he gets the season going.

Not that mere administrative reform will cure the basic trouble--the increasingly impossible task of privately financing public cultural institutions that do not pay for themselves. Expenses mount yearly. Tightening income tax laws and threatened restrictions on foundation grants make the endowment of artistic projects less and less attractive. The Met is not the only artistic organization in trouble. Dozens of orchestras across the country find themselves barely able to pay their musicians and keep going, even with massive help from local contributors. One obvious, if unpalatable answer lies in some form of Government subsidy of the arts. But that is hardly likely to come about, with so many other demands on Government. Working out a long-range solution will no doubt make Bing's labor problems look as simple to resolve as a dominant seventh.

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