-This majestic place... She just gleams, you know?

♪♪ Whenever I'm in the neighborhood, I come over I say, 'Hi, there. Remember me?

You know, I opened you,' you know.

-The old opera house was so beautiful -- red and gold.

I just fell in love with it.

-The old Met on Broadway at 39th Street was built in 1883.

-Big poles in front of seats.

I mean, that's the way it was built.

-They used to rehearse literally in anterooms to the toilets.

Seventh Avenue was our storage area.

-It was tiny! -Rudolf Bing came in 1949.

-Bing really realized the Met needed a new place.

-I don't think I quite visualized the hell it would be.

-He was tough as nails.

-Bureaucrat Robert Moses cut through all the red tape.

-Lincoln Square was the largest urban renewal project Moses pursued.

-People might see this as tragedy, as destruction.

-We were forced to move out.

No connections? You were nobody.

-Moses and the Metropolitan Opera board approached Wallace Harrison to be the lead architect with a number of different architects, on one project.

-There's 44 different designs for the opera house.

-Philip Johnson hated Harrison.

Moses is obsessed -- there had to be a park.

And Bing ganged up with all the rest of them.

♪♪ These were the people who turned his dreams into nightmares.

-Everybody wanted more -- they fought -- they fought quite a little bit.

♪♪ -Thanks for joining us for this special screening of 'The Opera House,' Susan Froemke's documentary film about the trials and tribulations of the Metropolitan Opera at a critical point in its illustrious history.

I'm Peter Gelb, the Met's 16th general manager.

My history with the Met goes back to my days as a teenage usher in the Family Circle standing room; that's all the way up there at the top of the auditorium.

My job was to keep the peace between some of the more rabid opera fanatics, whose impassioned support of their favorite stars sometimes ended in fist fights.

It was from that vantage point that I heard some of the greatest stars of the late '60s, including the legendary Italian tenor Franco Corelli, and America's greatest diva, the sublime Leontyne Price.

Their unforgettable performances in this palatial opera house of red and gold helped inspire me to pursue a career in the performing arts.

Once, when I was just 13, not long after the Met opened in its new home here in Lincoln Center, my parents were invited to sit in the box of the Met's celebrated and imperious 9th general manager, Sir Rudolf Bing.

I got to see him in action as he vigorously confronted two patrons in the adjacent box who had the audacity to boo right in the middle of an aria from 'Carmen.'

I had my first taste that opera was a passionate art form, and not for those with weak constitutions.

The film you are about to see is about the great Leontyne Price, it's about the legendary Franco Corelli, it's about the might Rudolf Bing, and the other cultural and political movers and shakers of the '50s and '60s -- a time of significant social change for New York.

I recently spoke with Ms. Price, who is celebrating her 91st birthday next month, and remains just as exuberant as ever.

Having watched and enjoyed an advanced copy of 'The Opera House' at her home in Maryland, she told me, 'You know, when I die, I would like a copy of this film placed in my coffin so that they can play it for me when I get to heaven.'

I hope you will enjoy the film too -- thank you.

[ Chorus singing ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Darling, I'm excited to be alive, and if I'm alive to talk about my operatic home, it's even more of a joy.

And there are so many wonderful memories from this extraordinary... How can I put it? Experience with... which was given to me by, I say, first, the man upstairs, and then by the entire Metropolitan family.

♪♪ This majestic place, she just gleams, you know?

And so I say, once in a while, whenever I'm in the neighborhood, I'll come over and I say, 'Hi, there, remember me?

you know I opened you?' you know, 'don't move.'

♪ ♪ It's the temple of opera, where I sang my last performance.

[ Singing in Italian ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ It was not too shabby, those good old days, you know.

And I'm not the only person had the I mean, my colleagues, you know, we just loved singing.

That's the first thing on your list, is to sing and enjoy, because that is what makes the audience love the whole human experience.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Cheering and applause ] [ Orchestra playing ] ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Beeping ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Piece ends ] -I graduated high school right after my 16th birthday and could only get a job in the mail room of an insurance company.

It was 1941.

It was $60 a month, and all I did was stamp policies to go out to various agencies around the country, and I had nothing in my life except going to the movies.

-I'll not be afraid.

-We've never been apart.

Really, not since we met.

-Not since we met.

-In the summer of '43, I went to see an older movie called 'A Farewell To Arms.'

It was Helen Hayes and Gary Cooper.

-In life, and in death, we'll never be parted.

-I'm sitting there, really enjoying the movie, and all of a sudden, the very last scene, I hear this music.

-I believe it, and I'm not afraid.

[ Score swells ] - I couldn't get the music out of my head.

I was in tears.

I mean, I left the theater, I was ashamed of myself, there I was, I was 18 years old and crying like a baby, and I said, what is this music?

Finally I found somebody said, it's opera.

I said opera?

And he said, 'Yes, it's the 'Liebestod' from 'Tristan und Isolde'.' I said, I've got to hear 'Tristan.'

So I picked up the telephone, and called and asked for the house manager of the old opera house, and asked if I could apply for a job as an usher.

I figured if I could -- if I was an usher, maybe I could hear some opera.

And he told me to write a letter, which I did.

And that was in September of '43.

And I got a card to report for work.

♪♪ As I walked in to the theater proper from the lobby, the house lights were just going on and I was so touched, so impressed, it was so beautiful, red and gold, just beautiful.

I -- I just fell in love with it.

♪♪ The old Met, it had so much history.

There was an aura there that I can't describe.

They put me up in the Family Circle, which is the very top level.

They didn't have a uniform, just a jacket.

But then I moved down to the balcony.

I loved it up there.

They were the people who came to hear the opera.

And I learned a lot from them.

I -- I just listened and listened.

♪♪ -The old Met was on Broadway at 39th Street and it was built in 1883.

It was really built for the box holders and by the box holders, the people who owned the boxes actually owned the opera house.

The auditorium was called the Diamond Horseshoe because the wealthy had so many diamonds on when they were in their boxes.

-The social scene of New York was based on the opening of the Metropolitan Opera and the horse show.

It was very social.

The orchestra was practically all white tie.

But for me it was all about opera and hearing great singing.

My first opening night was 'Boris Godunov' with Ezio Pinza on November 22, 1943.

I loved every minute of it.

But for the social set in New York, it wasn't about opera.

♪♪ There's a story before my time, but Mrs. Vanderbilt always came late and she had never heard 'Celeste Aida,' and she asked if they could put that aria later on in the opera so that she could hear it.

♪♪ -Good luck, Miss Tuffle.

♪♪ -In those days, the Met held a prominent place in mainstream culture.

[ Singing 'Carmen' ] ♪♪ -The singers were stars.

They appeared in cigarette ads, on the covers of magazines.

[ Singing ] -They even starred in Hollywood movies.

And it was the Metropolitan Opera that had launched their fame.

[ Singing, laughing ] ♪♪ -The Met and its stars may have been famous, but after World War II, the Board of Directors were looking for a new general manager, and they found a leader with real vision, Rudolf Bing.

-Bing was really an impresario.

He realized that every production that was on that stage was at least forty to fifty years old.

The Ring Cycle was the one from 1913.

-From the first time he came to the Met and he saw what was going on, on the stage, Bing immediately admired the fact that the... all the good singers were here.

But he couldn't believe the production standards.

[ Chorus singing ] Bing was determined to modernize the Met's productions and bring a higher quality of dramatic values to them.

-This is Rudolf Bing of the Metropolitan Opera House, New York.

The highest paid music executive in the world, the general manager of the grandest of all grand operas.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Applause ] -Bing was born in Vienna, but became a British citizen in the '40s and British, ten years in America notwithstanding, he stubbornly remains.

He carries a furled umbrella like a sword of honor, and his hat invariably is a bowler.

[ Singing ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -Now, hold it like that, drop the dagger a little, Dick, move back a little.

[ Singing ] ♪♪ -He says he may be able to come this afternoon.

-Uh, no, well, tell him if he cannot make this rehearsal, he must be taken out of the performance.

-Very good, sir.

-I call Mr. Bing the emperor.

He was very dapper, very aristocratic, very handsome, and tough as nails.

♪♪ ♪♪ He knew every score, Mr. Bing.

Every note of everything.

-The buck stopped there, you know, and he was the overseer.

He had hands-on, always.

-I think it was very good.

Just please don't forget when you hand over the rose, don't forget this is the moment that changes your life.

Really look with great intensity at her... -One of the things that separated Bing from other bosses was that you always knew where you stood with him, and he always told you how you had done the performance -- how he had liked, or not liked, anything that you did.

I remember one very famous colleague of mine once telling me that he actually said to her, 'I'm sorry dear, but I just don't like your voice very much.'

This famous lady, which shall remain nameless, told me, 'I didn't like what he said, but I respected him for that.'

♪♪ -Bing was often considered very autocratic and aloof, and he, I think, was fairly solitary in a lot of ways.

♪♪ But he and his wife had a series of dachshunds, and I guess they received all the warm part of him.

I love this picture of Bing with his dachshund in Central Park, where you actually see a lot of emotion in his face.

♪♪ -The Met itself was once the highest building in all this neighborhood.

Time and Manhattan have stripped its outward glory.

Someone once called it 'this great yellow brewery off Broadway.'

It's a theater of great traditions, where all the Toscaninis and Carusos and Callases of the last 70 or 80 years have sung and performed.

A kind of old-fashioned Italian opera house planked down in the middle of New York.

♪♪ -It was a thrill to just walk in to the boards on that stage, and to know that Caruso sang there, and Geraldine Farrar and all the great singers.

You almost felt that they were in that opera house, you know, spirits, ghosts, whatever you want to believe in.

You could smell everything -- the curtains, the wood.

It was living in the past, really.

But a beautiful past.

♪♪ [ Man singing, indistinct conversation ] -I saw my first opera in 1961.

It was 'Don Carlo, and it was with Franco Corelli.

[ Men singing ] I mean, Franco Corelli was like a movie star, and he had this incredible voice, and I didn't know that he didn't usually take the High C in 'Don Carlo,' but he took it that day.

[ Men singing ] ♪♪ [ Applause ] ♪♪ I was there with my parents and my mother, a very quiet English lady, my mother was, but she was almost hanging off the balcony going, 'Franco, Franco!' at the end of the performance.

[ Cheering and applause ] From then, I had it in my mind, I would just love in some capacity to be on that stage one day.

It would just be my dream.

Around 19-- early 1964, my mother said to me, 'You know, it's not going to be that much longer and your voice is going to change, so if you really want to be in the children's chorus you ought to do something about it now.'

Okay! On our way.

Sack and pillage, everybody.

Suddenly in September of '64, I got this card saying come down and audition for the children's chorus.

[ Men laughing ] The bested Babylonian.

In all of my years -- this is now 52 years later -- I can honestly say I've never been so nervous and terrified in my life -- I felt like I was being led to my execution.

I went in, into this room with all these little couches and everything like that, and every stage mother in New York sitting there with her arms folded -- you're not going to be better than my son, are you?

You know?

But I went in, and I had, like, three or four children's choruses prepared, which nobody did, you know, they all sang 'Happy Birthday.'

♪♪ They looked at me in horror, you know, 'What have we got here?!' But I sang the 'Turandot' children's chorus for them and they said, 'Oh, very good.'

[ Man singing in background ] For about two months, I thought I had failed the audition because I didn't hear anything from them, and then suddenly I got a card saying come in and rehearse.

[ Man singing, orchestra playing ] ♪♪ My first day of rehearsal, I remember December 5, 1964, it was a 'Lucia di Lammermoor' broadcast that day, and Joan Sutherland was one of my true idols.

[ Sutherland singing role of Lucia ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ I did my rehearsal, and then I waited downstairs by the stage door for my father to pick me up, and the stage door had a big iron door which was the only thing that separated the backstage from... from the stage, and it opened, and there in a blue light was Joan Sutherland singing, and I was listening on a transistor radio at the same time, listening to her and watching her there, and it was like a dream.

-The first time I saw an opera, I was totally smitten.

When I was a student at Juilliard, they had a special every week where the students could get standing tickets, and when I went to the Met, I stood the first time, and on the stage they were doing 'Salome,' [ Woman singing role of Salome ] ...with someone who became my beloved friend, Ljuba Welitsch.

[ Welitsch singing ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ It was one of the most exciting things I've ever seen in my life.

It was what I call in the vernacular, 'heavyweight.'

You know, it was just fantastic and I thought, this is for me.

I can pinpoint each contribution, shall we say, to making me the monster that I am today, and it's the same for dear old Juilliard.

♪♪ My first part to sing there was Mistress Ford in 'Falstaff.'

It was like magic.

Everything started, you know, sort of falling into place.

The next thing I know, Samuel Barber, who was a very great friend of my beloved Florence Page Kimball, my teacher who taught me to sing, he asked her, 'Florence, I've written a new cycle, are any of your garland of young ladies, is there any one of them that you can recommend that could do it for me?'

And she said, 'I have just the one you need, it's Leontyne.'

♪♪ We just... it was love.

His music was me, and I was his music.

♪ It -- Let me see... ♪ It has become that time of evening ♪ ♪ When people sit on their porches, rocking gently ♪ ♪ And talking gently and -- and -- ♪ ♪ And watching the street Oh, I can't remember the rest of it.

♪ It has become that time of evening ♪ ♪ When people sit on their porches ♪ ♪ Rocking gently and talking gently ♪ ♪ And watching... 'Knoxville 1915' is like, kind of like a tone poem, and everything about it is exactly Laurel.

That's the name of my hometown, Laurel, Mississippi.

♪ People go by For Christmas, I think I was about probably five years old, my mother and daddy gave me a toy piano.

The singing came a little later, and it came from Catherine Baker Price, my beloved mother, whose voice I still haven't reached the beauty of.

Her singing, hanging clothes up in the line in the back yard was like, better than any opera performance I've ever given.

♪♪ -A new season at the Metropolitan Opera opened this week, and it was a sellout on opening night, the show outside as well as the show inside.

The performance on the stage presented bits of several operas: 'Pagliacci,' 'La Bohème,' 'The Barber of Seville,' and 'Aida.'

-The old Met had difficulties.

What you did in 1883 no longer worked by the time I joined the company, and it had been obvious for some time.

-We had an old house that needed a lot of work -- 718 seats were either marked obstructed view, partial view.

We had poles in front of seats.

I mean, that's the way it was built.

-They used to rehearse literally in anterooms to the toilets.

It was very, very rough.

♪♪ -I rehearsed in the ladies powder room, I rehearsed in the ballet studio, and there were chorus rehearsals in the restaurant.

But backstage was the amazing thing because it was, compared to what we have now, it was tiny.

The back wall was Seventh Avenue, and your set finished and you had only a very limited space in back of the set to cross over to the other side and you could hear the traffic on Seventh Avenue.

♪♪ -The old house had one stage and no storage place elsewhere in the building.

For any scenery or anything like it, we had a warehouse at 129th Street, we had a warehouse on 40th Street, and we had the sidewalk behind the building.

Seventh Avenue was our storage area.

♪♪ -It rained, it snowed.

The sets got it.

How sets lasted for more than a couple of weeks, I don't know.

♪♪ -And so most people felt it really had outlived its use as an opera house.

And they were right.

-It's hard for us to imagine now that this went on until 1965.

It sounds like something you think, 'Oh, if that happened in 1890, you can understand it,' but it went on for a really long time.

The irony of all of this is that they realized that the old Met was inadequate as early as 1908.

In 1908, Otto Kahn was the president of the Metropolitan Opera Company.

And he was the one who spearheaded the big effort to get the Met to build a new house.

Kahn actually bought with his own funds a place on 57th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenue, and at one point they were going to build the Met there.

At one time they were going to do it at Washington Square.

There were all sorts of plans that never were realized because there were myriad problems, the most famous being Rockefeller Center.

Rockefeller Center was initiated by the Met.

♪♪ -The opera house would be the central element of the development.

There would be an open square in front of it, people going to the opera would drive around and be let off, and so on and so forth.

It would have been absolutely magnificent.

That was in 1928.

A year later, the stock market crash occurred and in the end, the Metropolitan Square project, as it was called in deference to the Metropolitan Opera, just collapsed.

♪♪ -Even though all of these projects had fallen through, the idea of a new home for the Met didn't go away.

♪♪ -There's not an inch of side space, there's not an inch of backstage and the equipment is just impossible for anything approaching contemporary standards.

And distinguished designers and directors were beginning to say, 'Look here, we just can't work there anymore.'

-By the mid-'50s, Bing really realized the Met needed a new place, but the big question was how.

-Getting big projects built in New York was always a test of endurance and stamina and cunning, I think.

It's difficult to assemble the money and parcels of land, and so on and so forth.

In the 1950s in New York, there was one man who could cut through all of the bureaucratic red tape, because he was in charge of all the bureaucrats who determined these things, and that was Robert Moses.

-Basically, he was the chairman of at least a half a dozen different commissions and agencies, so that when he wanted to do something, he would send himself a memo in his different capacity, and he would approve it, and send it to the next place, and he would approve it.

It took Robert Moses in all the different organizations that he chaired to be able to close the streets and condemn the buildings.

♪♪ -This is the slum.

Littered, airless, blocked.

♪♪ -In the mid-20th century, America was experiencing a period of urban decline.

In New York City, there were vast areas that were designated as slums.

There were problems of poverty, problems of racial segregation, problems of housing shortage, problems of white flight.

The middle class relocated to the suburbs.

-The slum called of Harlem.

I take that and all the other similar slums, I'd tear them all out. Every bit of them.

-Robert Moses had this concept of the slum as a disease afflicting the city, and the only way to address it, the only way to cure the city, was to cut it out... ♪♪ To demolish buildings and build new structures altogether.

♪♪ -There was a broad-based consensus behind the idea of slum clearance, all the way from working class tenants in tenement rowhouses, all the way up to various kinds of neighborhood organizations and city officials and urban planners, that this could be a way to solve the problems of the city.

This was the conventional wisdom, the progressive vision of urban renewal.

♪♪ -And then in 1949, Congress passed a very significant piece of legislation which set in motion the Federal Urban Renewal Program.

♪♪ A city could designate an area as a slum and obtain federal subsidies to redevelop it.

The minute that law was passed, Moses was ready to go with projects.

And in 1950, he releases the very first set of proposals for slum clearance in New York City.

♪♪ Moses had an overarching goal, which was to transform the West Side.

And the first step in the process was establishing the Coliseum, a modern convention hall for New York City at Columbus Circle.

What he said upon completion of the Coliseum project was that the scythe of progress must move forward.

And moving forward meant then redeveloping the area adjacent to the Coliseum.

So, Moses had his sights set on property that became the site of the Lincoln Square redevelopment.

It provided land for a music and art center, Moses being fully aware that the Metropolitan Opera had been frustrated in its attempts to relocate and build a new, modern facility.

Moreover, he was aware that the Philharmonic Symphony had a lease soon to expire at Carnegie Hall.

So Moses spoke to them and said he could provide them with land.

The Met and the Philharmonic got together to bring in a broader range of cultural institutions in this new development.

It was called Lincoln Center.

Lincoln Center will now, for the first time, bring together the art of ballet, the art of music and the symphony, the art of theater, the art of opera -- and New York will have an acropolis, which it has never had before.

♪♪ -Robert Moses and the Metropolitan Opera Board approached Wallace Harrison to be the lead architect at Lincoln Center because he was known for two previous group efforts -- the Rockefeller Center and the United Nations.

And it was a very similar situation with a number of different architects working on one project, and of course there had to be a leader.

Harrison was a natural gent -- extremely intelligent, charming, and above all, he was just completely honest and trustworthy.

At Lincoln Center, it was understood from the very beginning that each one of the venues would be designed by a different architect.

Philip Johnson would design the New York State Theater; Harrison's partner, Max Abramovitz, Philharmonic Hall; Pietro Belluschi, the Juilliard School; Eero Saarinen, the repertory theater; and Gordon Bunshaft for the Public Library for the Performing Arts.

♪♪ -Wallace Harrison was, in many ways, the ringmaster.

He was the kind of person who was good at marshalling competing personalities, at getting highfalutin' European and American architects who were used to getting their way to make compromises, when you had to make a bunch of different competing constituencies work together to design one complex.

So in many ways, that was his chief role in building Lincoln Center, but he was also the person who... who led the design and authored the design of the Metropolitan Opera.

-Harrison was a fascinating architect because he was an unusual combination of the practical and the political, and also the very idealistic, the modern, and the romantic.

And he really had an enormously fertile, potent, flamboyant, architectural imagination that he didn't always get a chance to really express.

And I think what he wanted most of all was to have the Metropolitan Opera represent his very best ideas.

♪♪ -Harrison had been thinking about the opera house for some time.

It was obviously a subject that interested him enormously.

His first drawings in the mid-1950s were extremely sculptural.

Something like this, for example, could come out of German expressionism.

This is the way he was thinking.

He then went to a concept which was more a combination of modern and historical -- I mean, this is obviously a reference to the Bernini Arcade at St. Peter's in Rome.

He was very ambitious. He really was thinking big.

♪♪ He wanted a grand forecourt, a grand entrance, and then the auditorium.

He thought for New York, the Metropolitan Opera House deserved something really big and handsome.

♪♪ The opera house was considered the jewel in the crown.

The most important of all of the facilities that were going to be offered at Lincoln Center.

♪♪ -Several of Harrison's early schemes had the Metropolitan Opera really as not just the central project of Lincoln Center, but the, sort of, sun, moon and stars.

It was almost all about the opera, and the other stuff was kind of just stuck in here and there, in relatively minor, clearly subsidiary ways.

Well, that was not going to fly with the other organizations.

The opera had to be willing to kind of play well with others, so to speak.

It had to be something that would work with facades by Philip Johnson on the one side, and Max Abramovitz on the other, and it had to be part of a trio of buildings.

♪♪ -Wallace K. Harrison did plans and did drawings and budgets, and the board asked what -- what would this cost?

And he said $47 million, and they couldn't believe it, they said, 'Well, that's ridiculous.'

They had, I think, $23 million in mind, which was a huge sum at that time.

-They realized of course that fundraising would be a major aspect of this whole project, that they couldn't do it unless they were able to raise the necessary funds, which at the time were enormous.

♪♪ John Rockefeller made a very generous donation to building Lincoln Center, and he was brought on as a fundraiser.

I think he was very effective as a fundraiser.

-He'd come into the office in the morning, and he would simply begin calling people.

And it was enough, often times -- 'I've been invited by John D. Rockefeller III to have lunch in the Rainbow Room.'

John understood that these kinds of things were very persuasive to people.

-There's this wonderful picture in which John D. Rockefeller is handing a check to Robert Wagner for the purchase of the land for Lincoln Center, with Robert Moses watching as this transaction takes place.

♪♪ -In 1954, a big blighted area of 18 blocks between Central Park and the Hudson River was scheduled for clearance and redevelopment.

Whole acres of substandard buildings were to be torn down.

-Other urban renewal projects in Manhattan were roughly ten to twelve acres.

Lincoln Square was 45 acres, so it was substantially bigger, substantially more ambitious, than any other project.

-Hundreds of slum buildings standing row on row covered the site.

They would have to be cleared away.

-Lincoln Square as an area was perfectly forgettable.

You had old walkup buildings with the fire escapes on the outside.

These were old buildings.

They were buildings that were not properly maintained.

They were buildings that, everyone agreed, there was consensus, that something had to replace that on the west side.

The fight was solely on who, what, when, where and how.

♪♪ Robert Moses had as his motto the demolition and the rebuilding, and very little stood in the way of his bulldozer.

And that bulldozer started to move uptown.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Lincoln Square is an interesting place because it had been the southern end of a rather well-to-do residential district when it was built in the late 19th and early 20th century.

But over the course of the 20th century, it came upon hard times, and it became a place eventually by the 1950s, a place that was a neighborhood primarily composed of European immigrants and their children.

So it was a neighborhood of very mixed ethnic and social background, working class and middle class, but there were also lots of proprietors, people who were craftspeople, people who owned shops.

There were over 600 commercial establishments in the neighborhood, and so it was a very bustling, very lively urban community.

♪♪ -I was born and raised in this neighborhood.

We lived in a tenement on Amsterdam Avenue, 67 Amsterdam, and 62nd Street was pretty much my playground as a kid growing up.

And we used to play ball in the streets here, mostly with a Spaldeen, we'd run up and down the streets, the sewers were of course first base, second base, whatever.

The streets on both sides, primarily, was all tenements.

The residents would sit on the stoops, sun themselves, there was card games, things like that.

And it was primarily Irish families.

There was all sorts of names. Right about here was the Malone family, and across the street was the O'Malleys and the Gillespies.

There's always plenty of kids in the neighborhood.

We always... we were mischievous.

We used to go swimming down at the docks during the summer, and we used to climb some of the ocean liners, there was plenty of them at the time.

My father earned his living by... he was a bookmaker.

He can't get into trouble now, but... [ Laughs ] but that's how I remember him making his living.

I have some photographs here of my family, there's a couple of pictures here of my mother and father, up on the rooftop when they were teenagers.

And this picture is of the ladies, of the Chit-Chat Club.

Here's my mom right in the middle.

It was all women from the neighborhood, and every month they would meet and they would sit around and just talk about life in general, they'd sing songs, drink beers, smoke cigarettes, have a great old time, and I think once a year they would treat themselves to a restaurant downtown.

Bunch of girls, they all lived here and got along great.

They all raised their families here.

Very nice memories.

-When I was nine years old, my family moved to 62nd Street and Amsterdam Avenue, which is right across the street from the Amsterdam project, we moved to some tenement housing.

It was a railroad type apartment and it was a good place to live.

We -- my mother enjoyed it, we enjoyed it, we had plenty of room.

My mother had plenty of friends, plus the fact that my mother had two sisters that lived in the Amsterdam projects.

And my mother would also go down to Ninth Avenue, that's where she used to buy her clothes, because my mother used to dress very nice.

So, she was content and everything around us, like we had Central Park, we had the 59th Street pool, it was fun living... living at 62nd Street and Amsterdam Avenue.

It was fun.

That's the living room where my mother used to have birthday parties, and you can see I'm there with my... my stepdad is there, my mother is there and you see my... my brothers and sisters.

It was a nice apartment.

-I remember the night that we found out that the neighborhood had been condemned or scheduled for demolition.

There was a Hershey's candy store, newspaper store at the corner of 64th Street and Amsterdam, and at night a lot of the kids would go down to get the newspaper for their father.

And I remember it was Christmas Eve 1957, and the 'Merry Christmas, Lincoln Square Project Goes Through.'

So we weren't sure exactly what that meant, because we were kids, and, of course, you have no realization there's going to be consequences.

But I remember that's how we found out, and in July of '58 we were gone.

-Eighty-eight buildings in a three-and-a-half block area, from Columbus Avenue to Amsterdam, from 62nd to 65th Street, this was to be Lincoln Center.

Then the very massive effort to clean the area began.

The tearing down, the cleaning up, and that endless sweeping away.

♪♪ ♪♪ -From Broadway and 64th Street in New York City, WCBS TV brings you the Groundbreaking Ceremony of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, featuring an address by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and music by the New York Philharmonic conducted by its music director, Leonard Bernstein, the Juilliard Chorus, and Metropolitan Opera stars Rise Stevens and Leonard Warren.

♪♪ And now, Mr. Bernstein. -Ladies and gentlemen, with this playing of Aaron Copland's 'Fanfare for the Common Man,' we have duly ushered in the first stage of a remarkable project.

The culmination of three years of planning to give New York and the whole American nation a great center of the performing arts, the like of which the world has never seen.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor to announce the arrival at Lincoln Center of the President of the United States.

♪♪ -You know, there's a very interesting, almost a foreign policy aspect to Lincoln Center.

One of the toughest and most difficult periods of the Cold War was the 1950s.

-♪ Oh, say, can you see ♪ By the dawn's early light -Many of the men and women who are involved with the creation and building of Lincoln Center were aware that much of the rest of the world viewed the United States as being incredibly materialistic, churning out vast numbers of cars and other manufactured products and uninterested in high culture.

-♪ And the rockets' red glare -So, part of the reason for doing Lincoln Center was an effort to tell the rest of the world, we value those things as well.

The struggle against communism was going to be more than just some sort of a diplomatic and military confrontation.

It was also waged on the cultural and intellectual fronts as well, and Lincoln Center is part of that... part of the battle.

-♪ And the home of the brave ♪♪ [ Applause ] -Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.

[ Applause ] -Thank you very much.

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts symbolizes an increasing interest in America in cultural matters.

Here in the heart of our greatest metropolitan center, men of vision are executing a redevelopment of purpose, utility and taste.

♪♪ The beneficial influence of this great cultural adventure will not be limited to our borders.

-♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah -Here will occur a true interchange of the fruits of national cultures.

-♪ Hallelujah -From this will develop a growth that will spread to the corners of the earth, bringing with it the kind of human message that only individuals, not governments, can transmit.

Here will develop a mighty influence for peace and understanding throughout the world.

[ 'Hallelujah chorus' continues ] ♪♪ I pay sincere tribute to your vision, your effort, your energy, that is creating the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

-♪ Hallelujah ♪ Hallelujah ♪♪ [ Applause ] -We were there for about three years until we were forced to move out because they were building the Lincoln Center, and we were kind of forced to move to the South Bronx.

I wasn't too happy about moving.

I liked where I was.

My brothers and sister liked where we were.

They approached my mother and says, 'This is... this is something you got to do, we'll take care of you, and you're out of here.'

And that was it.

What could she do?

She was this Puerto Rican lady who didn't have the -- I call it the entrée, you know, connections, I call it the hooks, the right people, to tell... to help us, say, 'Don't worry, you're not going to move.'

We were just like everybody else.

We were nobody.

[ Motors chugging, vehicles honking ] -On Manhattan Island today, men and machines are at work building for New York and the nation, laying strong and well the foundations for one of the great cultural projects of our time.

♪♪ -You get a sense here for how people could be invested in Lincoln Center as not only a good idea, but perhaps the highest calling of urban renewal.

But you can also get a hint of how people might see this as tragedy, as destruction, as the end of... of a whole urban world.

♪♪ -People say that you ride roughshod, that the reason you get things done is that you step on people without consideration of individual rights and individual wishes.

-You don't of course mean that we're sadistic about it, do you?

That isn't your implication, is it?

Deliberately jump on people for the sake of doing it, you don't mean that, do you?

-For the sake of getting things done.

-No, no, no. There's nothing to that.

-Robert Moses was not just a dreamer, he was a man who was determined, as is a bulldozer determined, to get done what had to be done.

♪♪ Robert Moses thought outside the box.

He did not think of New York City in the '50s and the '60s.

He thought of New York City as it could be.

He thought of New York City as the Empire City of the world.

[ Chorus singing ] ♪♪ -The word got out that perhaps I might be a pretty good young lyric on the scene.

1958 was when I sang, I think, my first 'Aida' in Europe.

If I'm not mistaken, it was at Covent Garden.

From Covent Garden, I was singing 'Aida' at the Arena di Verona, and the tenor was this Adonis, Franco Corelli.

It was such a success that they asked us both back for '59.

'59, Bing was in the audience and so taken... in 'Trovatore' -- the 'Aida' was pretty good -- in 'Trovatore,' we were insanely good.

He came backstage, he asked Franco Corelli and myself to go into the green room, and he said, ''61 -- 1961 -- I want both of you to make your debut at the Metropolitan, and I won't take no for an answer.'

[ Singing duet ] ♪♪ When I came to the old Met for the first time, Franco and myself both came out fighting, my dear, singing ourselves insane, and some of my fondest memories are everything from 'Ernani,' to 'Tosca,' 'Aida,' 'Trovatore,' were done with Franco.

And frankly, I had a problem, because he was so -- he was so tall and so handsome it was a little tricky, you know, to concentrate.

But you know, I kept myself... self, shall we say, focused.

[ Price and Corelli singing duet ] I was so prepared when I came to the Metropolitan, I did five roles in one year and there was no way in the world they could possibly get rid of me then, I was just so, really, prepared, dear.

Just... just ready to roll, shall we say.

[ Aria ends, audience cheering and applauding ] -Gradually, one of the great cultural projects of modern times is taking shape, and it is to be the creation from beginning to end of the American people, built by their contributions, given of their own free will.

The Center's planning committee and its architects are busy with the shape of things to come.

Under the leadership of John D. Rockefeller III, the project has grown far beyond its original idea.

-As architectural plans for Lincoln Center became more final and got costed out, there was a tendency for those numbers to constantly increase.

So John D. Rockefeller III, I think we can understand, was telling not only Wally Harrison at the Met, but the other architects, 'You've got to begin holding the line on these cost increases.'

-We'd make a set of plans, we'd budget it out, we had all kinds of rearrangements, and then I went to one meeting where Mr. Rockefeller was saying, 'Herman, we've just got to cut the budget, you got to find a way, you can't have everything you want here.

There's no way.'

-I mean, just about every design decision for the... for Lincoln Center, and especially for the Metropolitan Opera, was made on the basis of money.

♪♪ -Harrison's initial ideas, while very, very beautiful, were also quite expensive, and a building that had as many practical demands as the Metropolitan Opera is often difficult to combine with a very unusual sculptural form.

So, the project kept getting pulled in and altered, and he went through scheme after scheme after scheme, and it's an almost straight line of greater compromise, sort of reining it in, tightening it, making it a little more boxy each time.

♪♪ -My father was Wallace K. Harrison's right hand.

Working on the initial designs of the opera house, and worked very closely with Harrison.

♪♪ Harrison was feeling the pressures from the client and from Rockefeller to make the opera house traditional, to make it have vaults and arches.

So he needed someone he could trust, who had what he cared about, which was the artistic sensibility of an architect, and my father had that.

They communicated a lot through drawing and sketching, putting sketches on the walls and deciding which one was the direction they wanted to take.

There was 44 different designs for the opera house over the years.

If you're coming from a meeting where the budget got slashed by 50%, or the orientation of the building was turned 90 degrees, or you had to get rid of the second floor, you can imagine that the anatomy of the building is radically different.

It's not about taking a finished drawing and making a little change -- it's reconceiving the whole thing.

So he needed someone who was quick, who could redesign again for the next meeting the next week, so that you wouldn't fall behind in this kind of race of all the many people who were involved in the design of the building.

♪♪ -Ladies and gentlemen, you are taking a close look into the future of New York City, of the performing arts, and here in particular, of the opera.

Here is the new Metropolitan Opera House, one of five monumental buildings that form a project unique in our time, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

Incidentally, the opera house was designed by the coordinator of architecture for the whole of Lincoln Center, Mr. Wallace K. Harrison.

Now I would like to ask Mr. Harrison, how comes it sir, that the... so many famous architects with individual styles managed to harmonize or agree on this uniform, as it would seem, pattern?

-I suppose it was a combination of sweet reasonableness and their ability to fight.

-They fought, did they? -They fought quite a little bit.

-Well now... -It was very stressful, there were a lot of arguments, in-fighting.

-Harrison bore the brunt of that problem, which went on for years.

Philip Johnson hated Harrison. Detested Harrison.

He was jealous of him, jealous of his connections, he made Harrison's life miserable.

He was a ring leader in the group of architects who just hammered away at Harrison to get more space for their own buildings and to cut down the size of his building.

Also there was Moses -- Robert Moses -- who was totally intransigent about his park.

He was obsessed about the idea that there had to be a park at Lincoln Center.

This complicated everybody's life in terms of the amount of land that was available and the circulation among the different buildings.

And don't forget there was also Rudolf Bing, a Viennese who was used to getting his own way, and he ganged up with all the rest of them against Harrison.

♪♪ Harrison had been making designs for a Metropolitan Opera House for his own interest for decades, and these were the people who turned his dreams into nightmares.

♪♪ He lost everything that he wanted, he lost this grand forecourt to the opera, he lost even the lobby.

The lobby just disappeared.

He lost the tower behind the opera house, and the offices got shoved into the area that was supposed to be open and spacious and part of the lobby.

And that's why you have the Chagall murals, because those walls are the walls of the office space.

There was never supposed to be offices behind those walls, it was supposed to be open.

♪♪ ♪♪ [ Price singing aria ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -I went into what I call the inner sanctum of opera.

This is still the old house, downtown, and I... I thought, I wonder what this is about, you know, because there were plans for the new fabulous house were being, shall we say, choreographed at that time.

I didn't know anything about it, but Mr. Bing said, 'Leontyne, we have a bit of news for you.

You have been chosen by us and by Samuel Barber to open the new Metropolitan Opera House.'

I thought I was going to die.

I did a sort of, 'so what else is new' look, which didn't go down.

Are you kidding me?

And... I don't know... now Laurel really set in, Mama and Daddy really set in, everything... all my teachers set in, I thought, okay, because the whole point was for it to be an all-American occasion.

♪♪ That whole year I dedicated myself to living almost like a nun.

I did nothing that would possibly interfere with my being at my total, complete best.

I was just so determined that I was going to do my country proud.

We had to have a couple of pictures made, you know, publicity for it, and I remember I had what I thought, I'm going to have to take off my pillbox -- I had a little Somalian leopard pillbox, and I thought... I said, do we have to do this?

Said you know, 'It's all for art, Leontyne, Mr. Bing' -- who was you know -- this is trivia, dear -- 'Take your hat off so they can get the picture,' you know.

You know, for publicity.

And there was... Yeah... There it is!

That's Bob Merrill -- because Bob was doing, would you believe that we did -- That's Bob.

That is my Somalian coat.

Who knew?

[ Bells ding ] [ Laughter ] -Are you eager to perform in the new building here?

-Excited as I can be. I can't wait. Yes.

-Do you have any idea what performances you'll take part in when they do open it up?

-Not the slightest. I really... That's not important, just so I sing in the new building.

That's the most exciting thing for me.

-Well, I hope to provide not only for New York City but for the world one of the best... best equipped, most modern, and most beautiful new opera houses anywhere.

Which, after all, is what is essential and necessary as contemporary theater moves on.

[ Chorus singing ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -The feeling among the artists when it was decided and the new Metropolitan was being built, everybody was very excited about the move.

At the same time, many people, most of the singers, had very strong attachment for the old place, and they wanted that building to be preserved.

But there was nothing we could do.

The old theater was going to disappear.

-I was losing my home.

I was very unhappy.

Those last years I was house manager of the old house were very sad for me. I loved... I loved that place so much.

♪♪ -Meanwhile, the absolutely last act is being played out in this great yellow brewery on Broadway.

The gala closing ceremony in a few days' time will last five hours, it's said, and the great singers of the day, the Tebaldis and the Birgit Nilssons and the rest, will take part in a sentimental ceremony guaranteed to bring sentimental shivers down the spines of the tiara-bedecked dowagers who inhabit the diamond horseshoe.

-This opera house holds half my life.

I've been coming here since 1920.

I heard the last performance that Caruso gave, and it has a great meaning for me, sentimentally and otherwise. I hate to see it close.

I think the acoustics here are terrific.

We don't know what they're going to be like in the new house.

And I don't like to see it go.

-There's so little history in America, and every time there's a little bit, they tear it down, you know, it's kind of disgusting.

-Well, I know there are all sorts of people and groups who tried to save the Met, and the trouble is they are so ignorant of the facts.

Now, what you do with a close-to-4,000-seat house that is dark, that is technically virtually unusable?

I just don't think, sad as it may be, that the Met should be saved.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -One thing that I never told many people is that I was a stowaway at the last night of the old Met.

I was in the afternoon performance of 'Bohème,' and I turned to my parents and I said, nothing is getting me out of that house.

I'm not going to leave.

My parents said, 'But they'll find you, you know?

They'll... you'll be in trouble.'

And I said, no, no, the chorus men will hide me away.

So my mother made me, like, a very large bag of sandwiches, and I just stayed there.

I stayed up in the dark in the roof stage, and then when it came time for the performance, I came down by the chorus and they said, 'Oh, you're a stowaway, aren't you?'

And I said, 'Yep, mm-hmm.'

They said, 'Okay, we won't tell anybody.'

So I sat there and listened to the... pretty much the whole performance.

♪♪ -Leopold Stokowski, Bing asked to be the first conductor to conduct the closing of the old house.

Wonderful man but very eccentric.

He gets to the podium and he turns around and in a big loud voice said, 'Please save this beautiful old house,' something like that.

Bing was furious.

♪♪ -It was one group experience.

The 4,000 people sitting there, and then there were hundreds backstage, because there were not just the full company, and ballet doing 'Aida' triumphal scene, and the whole chorus and extra chorus and extra musicians, but there were also all the honored guests.

♪♪ -Being sentimental artists, a lot of singers even kissed the stage.

That same stage that had heard Caruso and Rosa Ponselle and Chaliapin and so, so many great artists.

[ Chorus singing ] -♪ Should auld acquaintance be forgot ♪ ♪ And never brought to mind? ♪ ♪ Should auld... -I walked around the whole house, and ended up in the balcony where I first started.

It was just a gala concert, but it was very, very emotional for me.

-♪ For auld lang syne, my dear ♪ -And even though everybody went on the stage to sing 'Auld Lange Syne,' I sang it from the balcony.

-♪ For auld lang syne ♪ We'll take... -It was sad. It was sad.

It was an old house, but what counts is the music, and the music was beautiful there.

-♪ For auld lang syne -It was a very autumnal experience.

There was a great, heavy finality about it, and no one wanted to see that curtain come down.

I think there's a picture of Richard Tucker and Zinka Milanov standing in the middle of the stage waving goodbye, and other people around them, but they're like the last two in the middle, and the curtain is just about to swish closed.

And you want to say, 'Stop! Don't! Please!'

[ Song ends abruptly ] [ Aria echoing ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -It was put on sale for $10 million and Irving Shannon bought the property.

He was a builder.

[ Soprano singing aria ] ♪♪ I had to be at the closing for the house manager to give the keys -- they were demolishing the house.

I was heartbroken.

They had just cut through the ceiling at that time.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Aria ends ] -Now Mr. Bing is facing what's undoubtedly the biggest challenge of his whole career, moving house to the new Metropolitan.

Work on the new Metropolitan, designed by Wallace Harrison, is up to schedule for the opening ceremony next September.

The first season will include a phenomenal nine new productions, including two world premieres of operas by American composers.

-What you've seen today speaks for itself and for Mr. Harrison's years and years of design.

He was architect for the Metropolitan Opera long before anyone ever thought of Lincoln Center.

He's been designing opera houses for years and years.

-The Metropolitan Opera was one of the longest sagas in his life, with more versions than almost any other building has ever gone through, and I think he knew in the end that while what he did was a very good hall in so many ways, and he did feel very good about many aspects of it, I think, there was a part of him that always felt he had sold a little bit of his soul at the same time, and that he had given up something, which he had.

-We open the house on September 16 with a performance of the world premiere of Samuel Barber's 'Antony and Cleopatra.'

-Artistically, can we have examples of what can be done on the stage of the new Metropolitan Opera House that could not be done in the old house?

-Well, I think the simplest thing is to say that in the old house, nothing could be done.

And in the new house, we hope that something can be done.

-While we were there, Mr. Bing arranged a guided tour to unveil the dream child of himself and his collaborators, among them the business manager of the Metropolitan, Herman E. Krawitz.

-On the left is a side stage and then behind that sound curtain there's another side stage.

This side stage has the possibility -- you can see it in this position... -Everybody wanted more.

So they got more in the new house.

♪♪ You have five stages at once.

One in the cellar, one on the stage, you can raise it and see the cellar one.

Or leave it down and bring in one from the side, left, right, and back.

So you could have five stages sitting there already set, and just press buttons and everything is supposed to happen nicely.

So, that's what was asked for, and that's what is there.

And at no point did anybody ever ask me to compromise on that stage.

-Look up, it gives you a feeling of what the room will look like, the chandeliers are the gift of the government of Austria.

-The chandeliers happened from an accident, which is one of the best ways to get out of your own way.

That's something that you didn't intend, when something goes wrong, when something doesn't happen as you willfully wanted, it opens your mind to something that's right in front of you.

One day, my father very characteristically is making a sketch, mixed media, grabbing anything that's in front of him, and not only of conceiving of a design, but then quickly visualizing it, so he's drawing it in order to communicate to others for a meeting, and in the process of adding some finishing touches with paint, a splat happened on his perspective, and there was no time to really start over again, because it was just before a meeting.

-So he quickly added some lines, so that splotch of white paint could be refracted light from the chandelier.

My father was nervous about that, because Rockefeller and Harrison both were thinking that they would get a traditional design for a chandelier, and this clearly was something else.

-There's a reason why everybody went, 'Ah!'

Even though they had other intentions -- my father's intention was not to splash across the page; Harrison's intention was to respect Rockefeller's intention, which was to do a traditional chandelier.

But they all went, 'Ah!' There's something that is shared that's just in the air -- suddenly it started to assert itself as not just an accident but as something that could be the beginning, the birth, the genesis of the design.

♪♪ Once you realize that something moved you, you return to it in your mind.

You run it back over your mind and again and again and again.

You have an empty page.

You have to speculate how to make a source of light, a lighting fixture that will be a chandelier.

Well, something has to hang, and something somehow the light has to be emanating from this initial point.

So if you were to draw the paint splash and you were thinking about the explosive geometry, like fireworks, like the Big Bang, that surface tension broken and exploding the material outward.

You'd start of course in the center, but then you'd start to realize that there's these zones moving out, that the material is following.

So, these drops, these circles, are starting to travel, they have energy, and they're starting to move outward -- so you start to see these squiggles.

This person is drawing something hovering between an idea of explosive geometry and the idea of something that would be crystallized and turned into light and glass.

And that's what architects do -- they have to keep going back to the idea to hold it, because all these ideas have to come together that it is going to be the design of something like a chandelier.

♪♪ So the drawings of architects always span this... from the abstract to the concrete.

It's always hovering in between, holding the idea.

♪♪ ♪♪ The next step was this wonderful execution and design development that was done by Lobmeyr, the greatest chandelier and crystal company in Austria.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -I was box office manager and house manager, and Bing wanted to test the acoustics.

I said, 'But it's not ready yet.'

He said, 'It's ready enough, I want a real audience of people, not just dummies,' which Philharmonic had done.

♪♪ At the opera, we had scheduled a student performance of 'Fanciulla del West,' so we bused all the children to Lincoln Center and we had the kids in the seats.

-They all had tickets for the old building, and worked it out that the morning of that affair, we sent everybody notices, 'Don't go to 39th Street, go to 65th Street -- go to the new house.'

♪♪ -Now, of course, it leaked out to some of the press and some of the singers who I had to let in.

I put them in the standing room in the back because the kids were in the seats.

And I loved their comments -- they were saying that's a good position to stand, you know, they found positions where the sound would be good on stage.

[ Orchestra playing, action onstage ] ♪♪ Then the first singer started to sing.

And that's what I wanted to hear.

In that opera, it starts with a male chorus.

[ Chorus singing ] And I knew from the minute I heard the first voice that we have good acoustics.

I was forty-some-odd years old, and I said to myself, I spent my whole life with the opera, and if the acoustics aren't good, why have a new opera house?

And they're very good.

[ Man singing ] -I have a picture of Corelli and Tucker congratulating me.

We have a success.

So we knew in April that the building was a winner.

[ Chorus singing ] ♪♪ -Rudolf Bing, manager of the Metropolitan Opera which for 30 years has been searching Manhattan for a new home.

Now, in late August 1966, a magnificent new opera house has been built.

A new opera has been composed for its unveiling, but neither is ready and less than three weeks remain till opening night.

[ Orchestra playing ] ♪♪ Leontyne Price, one of the great sopranos of this century, is working to perfect her opening night role as Cleopatra.

Franco Zeffirelli, Italian designer and director, is rushing to stage the most massive opera production ever attempted at the Met, Samuel Barber's 'Antony and Cleopatra.'

[ Indistinct conversation ] -♪ There he is, Mr. America ♪ -We were surrounded with geniuses.

Zeffirelli was a genius.

He was born a genius, there's nothing can be done about it.

He's just outstanding, everything he touches turns to theatrical gold.

[ Chorus singing ] He would get -- these ideas would come, and all of a sudden there they are.

[ Chorus singing ] -I remember Franco Zeffirelli so vividly.

Oh, he was a whirlwind.

He had more energy than I've ever seen anybody have.

He was everywhere.

Now, remember, he directed it, he designed the production of 'Antony and Cleopatra,' and he basically organized the libretto of 'Antony and Cleopatra.'

[ Price singing ] I remember suddenly I see this man just darting all over.

He'd go over to one person and say, 'Now you, you, very pompous, very pompous.'

And then he'd run over to somebody else and say, 'And you, very elegant.

Very elegant, yes, yes, very elegant.'

He could act out every single part for you.

There were six of us who had to come on with plastic vines that had gold leaves on them.

They were called festoons.

And he would always be saying -- suddenly in the middle he'd say, 'Where are the boys with the festoons?'

And so I -- I was 'boy with festoon.'

-Rudolf Bing also has new productions of 'La Traviata,' 'La Gioconda' and 'Die Frau ohne Schatten' competing for rehearsal time onstage.

His assistants, Herman Krawitz and Bob Herman, are here with a scheduling problem.

Zeffirelli wants more rehearsal time.

-On Tuesday, the first day we put everything together, we'll have all the lighting done, we'll have had the orchestra and so forth -- -I don't know when. I hope.

-Well, in about the -- -What he's asking for is nine additional hours of rehearsal that's not here. -Not here... Really? -That's correct.

-And then on Sunday -- -You're not supposed to rehearse unless it's an emergency.

-But it is an emergency. -And it's not an emergency.

This is just planning. It's not an emergency.

There's no sickness, there's no accident.

-The accident is we're not ready.

-It is an emergency.

It's a new house is an emergency.

-It's a disaster. Not an emergency.

-Rudolf Bing was very concerned giving up a house that with all its deformities and so forth, he knew how to make work.

-Well, would you wait just a minute please.

-And how would this new house work?

Mind you, we planned nine new operas in the first season.

We were crazy.

-I don't think I, or any of us, quite visualized the hell it would be.

[ Snorts ] Uh... it's a beautiful house and I'm delighted to have it, but it is not nearly ready, technically.

-The centerpiece of the new Met stage is a turntable around which Zeffirelli has designed his production.

On it he intends to change scenes, rotate huge props, and wheel armies into view already drawn up for battle.

-So I was standing in the auditorium, and he puts an army on the stage, and they don't march because the turntable breaks.

I said, 'My God, what's this about?'

-Let's see if you can start again now.

-You can't start -- won't start.

It won't work.

You can get it going and get on it and you see it works.

-There's no possible way to put a cable under this.

-So I go up there and somebody gets to look underneath -- the steel bent.

I said, 'How in the world could that happen?'

So I run up to my office and I see what it says, I call up the engineer, he said, 'Herman, we made a mistake.'

I said, 'What do you mean?'

I said to them, I told you clearly what I needed.

I needed a turntable that could handle an automobile, or an elephant standing on one foot.

When we signed it we went over all this.

-It just won't work. -I'm just appalled.

This is the first instance in the long life of the new Met that you have 200 people on a turntable that won't move.

Throw it in the reverse.

Take it and throw it!

We can't use it! It's no use for anybody.

-That was the day, the only day, that Franco Zeffirelli, I think, ever lost his cool, and I don't blame him.

-What do we do now?

-He had to restage the opera suddenly in fifteen minutes.

But, temper tantrum over, back to work.

-Ready?

[ Pianist playing ] Shh! Quiet.

Out.

♪♪ [ Man singing ] -Bring down the boys, gold boys, come on, come on.

Follow them, follow them, here, here.

-Zeffirelli discovers that the music no longer fits the time it takes to move his armies around the stage.

-We need one minute music for the exit of the army.

-Well, Sam should be here any minute.

We'll get him as soon as we can.

-Thomas Schippers is left to count out the bars of new music Sam Barber will be asked to compose.

[ Crosstalk ] -Undoubtedly, because nobody liked this music and I fought for it, and now that we're cutting it and I want to cut it all, everybody says keep it.

-The business of composing continues through last minute additions and cuts.

[ Humming, playing piano ] -Each time he would write a part of the score, Sam would come home to my house.

We would have dinner -- supper -- and go upstairs to the piano, and just went phrase by phrase, and I would sing it.

I was on the piano stool next to him.

So every note, every line, every phrase, it was like drawing a painting.

[ Singing ] By the time we got to the Metropolitan, I knew every note cold.

♪ That I might see but such another man ♪ -A lot of tweaking was taking place and we would get the music in the morning, we would rehearse musically all day long, learn it that afternoon, and the next morning, we were staging it already.

♪♪ -Look, just get him a little big message, will you?

The orchestra... I'm starting at two o'clock and we must be on time.

No more complaints about space or anything like that.

I've got one hour to read two hours music.

That we start on time on the second of two o'clock, okay?

Thank you.

[ Orchestra tuning ] Shh. Gentlemen, ladies.

Shh! Good morning, afternoon, evening.

See if you can dig up please.

Music that just came in hot off the press, third act.

Scene three, Number 39.

[ Orchestra playing ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Price singing ] -That first time I walked out on that stage at the new temple Met, I thought, 'You've got to be kidding!'

It was so huge!

The first note that I sang, I thought I was singing to Staten Island.

It was that incredible.

The acoustics, I said, 'I don't care what you all do now.'

I just heard my beautiful voice go like it was into another country.

[ Price singing ] ♪♪ This new place to sing in was such a glory, the acoustics are so marvelous, it was quite incredible, I must say.

♪♪ I didn't understand it. Okay.

-Just wait forever before you sing -- -Good, good.

Yes, yeah.

[ Vocalizing ] Okay!

[ Motor whirring ] -During the dress rehearsal tonight, Zeffirelli's pyramid will close over Leontyne Price and move offstage to make a change of scene.

-There we are. -The management begins to worry as stage crews are driven to exhaustion, trying to hang thousands of pipes that Zeffirelli wants for scenery.

-This was far out -- pipes everywhere.

Pipes -- horizontal pipes, pipes, pipes everywhere, and as it was going up, we thought, 'My God, what is he doing?'

But the visual of it all when it was finished was... The man was a genius.

-Zeffirelli was a mad man during that time.

It was a... nothing but pipes.

Pipes hanging all over the place.

All summer long we were listening to people clanging pipes. It was very ugly.

-What was with all the pipes?

Everybody talks about pipes, do you remember the pipes?

-Darling, I didn't see the pipes.

I had a tomb to worry about.

[ Man sings, orchestra playing ] ♪♪ -Antony leaves Cleopatra in Alexandria to go to Rome, a change of scene Zeffirelli plans to accomplish by enfolding Cleopatra in the pyramid, moving it offstage in the dark, then bringing the lights up again on the Roman scene.

♪♪ [ Chorus singing ] But as the lights come up on Rome, the Egyptian pyramid is still mid-stage, stalled.

-The tomb wouldn't open, and the next cue was coming.

And I was locked inside.

Fortunately I'm not claustrophobic.

[ Chorus singing ] [ Men shouting ] [ Coughs ] -Oh, is he bringing the house curtain?

-I'll never get out of here with my life.

I know it.

Later, later. There.

-...same as they were in the -- -Yes. -All right.

-Well, there are absolutely staggering problems, and I think it was a mistake -- my mistake -- to open with four huge new productions within nine days.

But now we are in for it, and I hope and trust that with the excellent help we are getting from all our staff, the crew, everybody concerned, that we'll just pull through.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Opening night, presidents and their wives from the Philippines and Europe were there.

Every reporter from all over the world was there.

♪♪ -Backstage, the tension is soaring -- there's a threat to close the Met with a strike.

The orchestra will vote during an intermission on whether to walk out on the rest of Bing's opening schedule.

Zeffirelli decided to remake Leontyne Price's dress at the last moment.

-Was that right? -Get the last two.

-The stage crews have not had the time they need to ensure that this great movable, foldable, rotating pyramid will work this time.

-Curtain going up. -Curtain going up.

-There was chaos all around.

Now, I said to myself, 'You have to be the person to stay steady, Leontyne.'

-Miss Price, I know it's rather silly to ask about emotions on these occasions, but your emotions must be sort of spilling over.

Is there anything you care to say at this point?

-Yes, I will.

First place, I'm anything but calm.

I'm grateful to God for this privilege, this honor, I am exhilarated beyond belief, and excited completely out of my skin.

[ Laughter ] I'm also excited too, Mr. Bing, because tonight, my hometown, Laurel, Mississippi, is now connected with our broadcast, and this makes me so proud of them.

I cannot possibly tell you.

-Well, I think this is very nice for our broadcast.

-It's marvelous.

I heard this applause, and later on I found out that the First Lady had invited my parents in her box.

And the audience applauded my parents.

That was what the applause was.

[ Cheering and applause ] [ Orchestra playing ] ♪♪ [ Chorus singing ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -Antony leaves Cleopatra to go to Rome, and the pyramid begins to enfold Cleopatra to make the change of scene to Rome.

♪♪ As the lights come up on the Roman scene, the pyramid has disappeared.

It stalled again, but far enough back to be out of sight and allow the opera to continue.

[ Chorus singing ] ♪♪ -♪ Give me my robe ♪ Put on my crown Let me see if I remember the words.

♪ Give me my robe, put on my crown ♪ ♪ I have immortal longings in me ♪ ♪ Now no more It was superb!

I really sang like an angel.

You just want to kiss yourself you sound so great.

I have on time, on occasions.

[ Laughs ] [ Cheering and applause ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ To this day, I will never recover from it.

The honor itself, and that I delivered.

♪♪ ♪♪ -I will tell you, it's... it's more than a building.

I think Mr. Bing said it about the closing night of the... of the Old Met.

He said, 'This is farewell to bricks and mortar only: the Met goes on.'

♪♪ I never thought I would be here 52 years after my first performance, and fifty years into this house.

It's my life story.

This is my family, you know?

The family changes, always renewing, always replacing, always fresh.

[ Singing aria ] -All those old ghosts, they moved here to Lincoln Center, and, uh, they're still with us today.

♪♪ ♪♪ -My first opening night was November 22, 1943, and I haven't missed an opening night since.

♪♪ It's strange, when I dream now, I always dream about the old opera house.

I dream about me working in the balcony, and sometimes I'll remember the people I used to talk to, and my dreams are in Technicolor, actually, so I can see the red and gold.

♪♪ ♪♪ -As you can see, the temple is still standing, as majestic as ever.

She always will shine.

Uh, like the art form that I'm in, like the art form we have, the opera.

That building will always be center stage because of what it's doing in there.

It's a grande dame.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ It will endure for another 50 years, my dear... trust me.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪