Rudolph Bing managed the Metropolitan Opera Company for over 25 years, working with Renata Tabaldi, Maria Callas, Arturo Toscanini, Richard Tucker, Rise Stevens, Patrice Munsel, Robert Merrill, Beverly Sills and more. His feuds with Callas and Sills made headlines (all greatly overpublicized, he says).

In KNIGHT AT THE OPERA, Bing describes the problems and surprises he encountered in running the Met. His recollections are surprising and fascinating as he portrays the personalities and the organization from a unique perspective. Successes and disasters, performers and critics, composers and conductors -- all are seen there through Bing's sometimes passionate, always interesting and always biased point of view.

Bing was instrumental in persuading artist Marc Chagall (who painted the mural on the ceiling of the Paris Opera) to design the sets and costumes for Mozart's "Magic Flute," one of the first operas performed when the Met opened its new house. Chagall accepted the challenge and helped create an unforgettable production of Mozart's last opera.

The history of the Metropolitan Opera under Bing is like the performances produced on its stage: comedy is so light, tragedy so dark, and everything seems to happen at once. This book is an absorbing look at the staging of an era -- full of egos and personalities and stories that could only be told by the man who scored it all.

As Sir Rudolph Bing describes it in this autobiographical account, managing an opera house is a juggling act between negotiating with Opera Boards who can't understand why mounting an opera is such an expensive undertaking, dealing with singers, musicians, and conductors who each have ego, money, and schedule requirements, time conflicts that make mounting a production extremely difficult, and working within the constraints of Union requirements. Phew, what an ongoing nightmare!

Bing, who progressed from book-store employee to talent agent to part-time festival manager, to full-time manager of the Met (Metropolitan Opera House, in New York), spent the last 23 years of his career as the manager of the Met. Along the way, the founding of the still on-going Edinburgh festival was one of his major accomplishments.

There is no doubt that Bing, himself, had a monumental ego, but that ego along with his drive and desire to make a success of the Met, was absolutely necessary if he was to deal with the many temperamental artists that make up a big part of the Opera elite.

He found the Met in near shambles - a badly deteriorating building, a limited repertoire, scenery and sets badly in need of repair or replacement, severe scheduling problems, and inadequate funding to rectify these problems. Under his guidance, many new productions were mounted with proper scenery, sets, lighting, etc., a lot of additional funds were raised, adequate rehearsal time became the rule of the day, and the Met finally got out of the old opera house and into the new Lincoln Center which had been designed with the needs of the opera foremost in the minds of the architects.

5000 NIGHTS introduces the readers to many of the leading lights of opera during Bing's tenure, and through anecdotes reveals which ones fit the classic stereotype of the "Prima Donna" (many did), and which of them bent over backwards to be co-operative.

In his closing chapter Bing states that "I found most singers hard working and reliable." He lets us know that he was appreciative of his opportunities and felt that he had a most gratifying career at the opera.