{"product_id":"the-toughest-show-on-earth-isbn-9781400096756","title":"The Toughest Show on Earth","description":"\u003ci\u003eThe Toughest Show on Earth \u003c\/i\u003eis the ultimate behind-the-scenes chronicle of the divas and the dramas of New York’s Metropolitan Opera House, by the remarkable man who rose from apprentice carpenter to general manager.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJoseph Volpe gives us an anecdote-filled tour of more than four decades at the Met, an institution full of vast egos and complicated politics. With stunning candor, he writes about the general managers he worked under, his embattled rise to the top, the maneuverings of the blue-chip board, and his masterful approach to making a family of such artist-stars as Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Teresa Stratas, and Renee Fleming, and such visionary directors as Franco Zeffirelli, Robert Wilson, and Julie Taymor. Intimate and frank, \u003ci\u003eThe Toughest Show on Earth \u003c\/i\u003eis not only essential for music lovers, but for anyone who wants to understand the inner workings of the culture business.“Engaging . . . delightful . . . A classic American success story.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e“This engaging volume will delight readers for whom opera is not only an art but also an endless fount of good gossip. . . . A rarity–one of those much-ballyhooed ‘insider books’ that actually delivers the goods.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post Book World\u003c\/i\u003e“Fascinating. . . . [Volpe’s story] has the golden glow of the American dream.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New York Sun\u003c\/i\u003e“A gripping journey of personal and professional discovery.” —\u003ci\u003eOpera News\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eJoseph Volpe\u003c\/b\u003e was born in Brooklyn. He joined the Metropolitan Opera in 1964 and was its general manager for sixteen years. He lives in New York City with his wife, the former ballet dancer Jean Anderson Volpe, and their daughter.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCharles Michener\u003c\/b\u003e was senior editor for cultural affairs at \u003ci\u003eNewsweek \u003c\/i\u003eand senior editor at \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker \u003c\/i\u003eand has written widely on music for many publications. He collaborated with Robert Evans on \u003ci\u003eThe Kid Stays in the Picture \u003c\/i\u003eand was coauthor with Peter Duchin of \u003ci\u003eGhost of a Chance. \u003c\/i\u003eHe lives in New York.1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“BE PATIENT”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy maternal grandmother, Marianna Cavallaro, spoke no English, and   whenever she came to babysit for me and my sisters while our parents   were out, she’d go over to a shelf in the living room, take down a   record album, and say to me in Italian, “Joey, put this on.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI was only five or six, and carrying the bulky volume of 78s over to   the Victrola wasn’t easy. But I liked climbing up on a stool, removing   a shiny black disc from its sleeve, hearing it plop into place, and   then positioning the needle in the groove. My grandmother always sat in   the same place—an armchair with a straight back that made it impossible   to slouch. She wanted me to sit nearby on the sofa, perfectly still.   But I hated sitting still. Once the music started and my grandmother   closed her eyes, I slid down to the floor, leaned against the sofa, and   imagined myself somewhere else.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe music was always the same—Mascagni’s one-act opera \u003ci\u003eCavalleria   Rusticana\u003c\/i\u003e, which is set in a Sicilian village like the one from which   my grandmother had come to America, not long after the opera was   written, at the turn of the century. Nobody told me that this was   “opera.” Even if anyone had, I wouldn’t have paid attention. This music   belonged to my grandmother. It made her happy. She always insisted on   listening to the whole album—there were perhaps eight or ten discs—and   she never fell asleep. I guess she picked that particular chair so she   wouldn’t miss a note.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI couldn’t fall asleep either. Before I knew it, the needle had reached   the center of the disc, the loud, scratchy voices had stopped, and my   grandmother was saying quietly in Italian, “Change the record, Joey.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLooking back, I find it interesting that my grandmother never asked my   older sister, Joan, to participate in those musical séances—this was a   job only for me. Was she sending me a message? Was this how it all   began?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe thought that I could one day run The Metropolitan Opera first   crossed my mind when Rudolf Bing retired as general manager in 1972. At   the time, I was still only master carpenter, in charge of the seventy   or eighty men who set up and dismantled The Met’s stage for every   performance. I’d wrestled with budgets. I’d demonstrated a knack for   learning quickly on the job. I was good at solving problems and   handling emergencies. I felt I knew better than anyone how The Met   worked, mechanically and logistically.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Met is the biggest performing arts institution in the world. Every   year it presents some 240 performances of thirty or so different   operas, each with an international cast and elaborate sets. It employs   more than two thousand people and has annual operating expenses of more   than $220 million. To keep it going requires not just the muscle and   the know-how of carpenters, stagehands, painters, designers,   electricians, and prop men, but also the skills of musicians, singers,   vocal coaches, dancers, ballet masters, stage directors, conductors,   artistic administrators, marketing and publicity people, and the   efforts of The Met’s board of directors, which raises the funds to pay   for what the box office doesn’t. In 1972, I didn’t really understand   how many of those jobs were done. Nor did I have the slightest idea how   Rudolf Bing had managed to coordinate everyone during the two decades   he’d been in charge.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eStill, I thought that the top job at The Met—which means the top job in   the opera world—was not out of reach. I felt that in some mysterious   sense I’d been chosen by Rudolf Bing himself. Not that he ever hinted   as much. He was too much the aristocrat, out of a Viennese operetta.   But on more than one occasion, he’d taken me aside to offer advice in a   way that suggested he had bigger things in mind for me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne of our earliest encounters took place at the end of my first season   as master carpenter. In those days, The Met went on an eight-week tour   every spring. Boston, Cleveland, Atlanta, Memphis, Dallas, Minneapolis,   Detroit—for years the company had been playing to packed houses beyond   the Hudson River. That year, we opened with \u003ci\u003eLa Gioconda\u003c\/i\u003e in Atlanta. The   stars were the soprano Renata Tebaldi and the tenor Franco Corelli.   After the performance, Mr. Bing came backstage and said, “Mr. Volpe,   I’d like to see you in the morning.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe next morning, he led me into one of the principals’ dressing rooms   and closed the door. “Mr. Volpe,” he said, “I think you’re doing a   wonderful job. I’m going to give you a raise of fifty dollars a week.”   That came as a huge relief, but then he said, “So how did Mr. Corelli   do last night?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Excuse me?” I said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“How was his behavior backstage?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBefore a performance, Franco Corelli was always a wreck, complaining   that his girdle was too tight or fighting with his wife, Loretta, who   never left his side until he was able to summon the courage to make his   entrance. “You didn’t notice?” Mr. Bing went on. “Franco Corelli, one   of the most important tenors in the world, and you didn’t \u003ci\u003enotice\u003c\/i\u003e?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I guess I was too busy with the scenery.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Well,” Mr. Bing said, “the next time I ask you about Mr. Corelli’s   behavior, you will have noticed!”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRudolf Bing had his finger on the pulse of The Met. His retirement,   after the 1971–1972 season, gave way to twenty years of turbulence.   First came the death of his successor, Goeran Gentele, in a car crash   in Sardinia. This was followed by a brief, rudderless period under   Gentele’s assistant, Schuyler Chapin. Next came the stormy triumvirate   of John Dexter, the brilliant head of production; James Levine, the   boy-wonder music director; and Anthony Bliss, a patrician estate lawyer   who ran The Met out of a sense of family duty. Those years were marred   by backstage intrigue, financial instability, and bitter fights with   The Met’s seventeen unions, culminating in the cancellation of the 1980   fall season—a labor lockout ordered by The Met’s imperious board. The   brief reign of Levine as artistic director and of Bruce Crawford, a   smooth, opera-loving advertising executive, as general manager, began   in 1985. Bruce became something of a godfather to me. I admired his   velvet manner, but it wasn’t a style I would emulate.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlong the way, I’d been promoted from master carpenter to technical   director to operations director (responsible for backstage budgets and   labor negotiations) to assistant manager (in charge of everything   except artistic matters and fund-raising). None of these advancements   came without an objection from someone higher up; in each case, I had   to swallow my pride. But I had been at the center of   everything—watching, learning, and not keeping my mouth shut. In 1988,   Crawford decided to return to Madison Avenue. I felt that I was his   logical successor. Instead, The Met’s board chose an arts bureaucrat   named Hugh Southern whose only qualifications for running the company   seemed to be that he’d never seen the front office of a great opera   house—but he sported an English accent, courtesy of Cambridge   University. Those qualifications turned out to be not quite enough.   Southern was dismissed after seven months.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the summer of 1990, Crawford, who was now the chairman of The Met’s   executive committee, came into my office to tell me that I was being   promoted to “general director.” For a moment I was speechless. Then I   snapped, “Why not ‘general manager’?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce explained that the board had decided to reinstate the triumvirate   model of management. I would run the house internally. Jimmy Levine   would remain artistic director. Marilyn Shapiro, who had been in charge   of marketing and development, was now executive director for external   affairs. We would all report to the president of the board, Louise   Humphrey, a Cleveland heiress who had a plantation in Florida, a horse   farm in Kentucky, and a summer compound in Maine. Hugh Southern had   gone quail shooting at Louise’s Florida spread. I’d never shot a quail   in my life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Maybe I shouldn’t accept it,” I said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Joe,” Bruce said, “it will all come to you in the end.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Who gets the room at the end of the hall?” I asked, referring to the   office from where Rudolf Bing had reigned.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce said, “You’ll stay where you are. The general manager’s office   will become a conference room.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “It works perfectly well as a conference   room right now—with a real general manager behind the desk. It’s like   being asked to run The Met with one hand tied behind my back!”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Trust me, Joe,” Bruce said. “It will all work out. Be patient.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI knew that my blunt manner had ruffled a few feathers on The Met’s   board. After one board meeting, Bruce had taken me aside and said,   “Joe, what you have to say is right. But it’s the way you say it . . .”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDuring the search that coughed up Southern, I’d also heard that various   board members were raising other objections about me. Would Volpe, the   ex-carpenter, be able to talk to the singers? Would Volpe be able to   “represent” The Met at gala fund-raising functions? Did Volpe have the   right stuff . . . socially? Although my grandparents had come to   America from the country where opera was born, I had never studied   music. I didn’t have a degree in arts management. I’d barely graduated   from high school.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEverything I knew about running an opera house I had figured out for   myself, starting by using my hands. I’d stayed at The Met for   twenty-five years because I’d come to love opera. The Met had been my   undergraduate education, my graduate school, my Ph.D. program. I   considered The Met “family.” Now I was supposed to take Bruce’s advice:   “Be patient.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor someone like me, that wasn’t going to be easy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e2\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eALWAYS ON THE GO\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the den of my apartment in New York is a photograph of my parents’   wedding reception. The date is September 8, 1935. The setting is   Trommer’s banquet hall at 1632 Bushwick Avenue, in Brooklyn. There are   several hundred people in the high-ceilinged main dining room—the women   with corsages, the men with slicked-down hair and dressed in   double-breasted suits. At the head table are twenty-two people—the   bride and groom and their immediate families. My parents—my mother in   white satin, my father in white tie and tails—look happy and proud.   There isn’t a blonde in sight.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd there isn’t an empty place. A thousand people were invited, and   when some of them didn’t show up, my grandfather went outside and   brought in strangers off the street. He wanted a full house. I would   have done the same thing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBasilio Cavallaro was born in 1881 in the mountain village of Cesarò,   in Sicily. At the age of twenty-six he came to America, arriving at   Ellis Island on March 17, 1907. Soon, he met and married my   grandmother, Marianna Cerami, who had arrived the previous year from a   similar Sicilian village, Petralia Soprana. They settled in Lower   Manhattan, where my grandfather started a little storefront business   that made men’s clothing. Another family photograph shows the shop as   it was in 1914. B. CAVALLARO TAILORING CO. the letters read, and in   front of the store is my mother astride a pony—one with a Sicilian   pedigree, no doubt. My grandfather worked hard, enlarged his business,   and in 1925 founded the Italian Coat Contractors Association, which   eventually became the Greater Clothing Contractors Association,   representing the interests of all the men’s clothing manufacturers in   New York.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy grandfather had highly placed friends among the police and politicians, especially Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, who was a   frequent guest at the family’s three-story brick house in Jamaica,   Queens. The only memento I have of my grandfather is his Colt revolver.   I grew up with stories about how it had come in handy when mobsters   tried to muscle in on the men’s clothing business.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy grandfather’s house had a big front porch, two stone lions on guard,   a dark walnut stairway, and a dining room that seemed to stretch for   miles. At Sunday dinners, my grandfather stood at the head of the table   and surveyed his family, which included more aunts than I could count.   Among his eleven children was my mother, who was born on July 16, 1911.   She was baptized Fortunata Angela Carmela Cavallaro. There were always   at least twenty people seated around big bowls of pasta under stuffed   pheasants mounted above the sideboard. My grandfather was an avid   hunter, and his favorite hunting companion was his Irish setter, Red.   When Red was accidentally shot and killed by another hunter, the   wailing around that table went on for hours.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs a little girl, my mother—like her mother—spoke no English. When she   started going to school she was made to sit in the corner and wear a   dunce cap. She eventually went to Hunter College, where she earned a   master’s degree that enabled her to become a first-grade schoolteacher.   Later, she taught in a predominantly black school in Glen Cove, Long   Island, where she was known as a stickler for proper English. After my   older sister was born, Mom wanted only English spoken in the house. No   one could stop my father from speaking Italian. But Dad made it clear   that none of his three children would learn Italian. After all, we were   American.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy father’s parents were immigrants from Avellino, a town outside   Naples. I was named after my paternal grandfather, Joseph Michael   Volpe, who was as quiet and reserved as my grandfather Basilio was   outgoing and gregarious. For most of his life he had a tailor’s shop in   Red Bank, New Jersey. I remember very little about him or about my   grandmother Nunziata, except that she was a great one for complaining   about her health.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy father—his given names were Michael Joseph—was the oldest of five   children. At a young age, he started Associated Clothing, which made   men’s suits and overcoats. Before long, he had a small factory at   142–144 West Fourteenth Street, which had several hundred employees.   (The building is now occupied by the Pratt Institute.) A few years   later, he opened another factory in Atlantic City. My father did so   well that he was able to pay the law school tuition of his favorite   younger brother.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy uncle Joe went on to become an important Washington lawyer. He was   the general counsel of the Tennessee Valley Authority and, later, the   general counsel for the Atomic Energy Commission. In the latter job, he   became a close adviser to J. Robert Oppenheimer, who led the team that   built the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos. After the war, Uncle Joe was   counsel to “Oppie” during the House Un-American Activities Committee   hearings, at which the physicist was questioned about his prewar   associations with the Communist Party. When Oppenheimer, who had a   quick tongue, said something during a congressional hearing on atomic   energy that made one of the commissioners, Lewis Strauss, look foolish,   my uncle—a very judicious man—cautioned him to watch his mouth. When I   grew older, Uncle Joe would have given me the same advice. Like Oppie,   I probably wouldn’t have taken it.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303405867237,"sku":"NP9781400096756","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400096756.jpg?v=1767741880","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-toughest-show-on-earth-isbn-9781400096756","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}