Mr. B. and the Four Js

By Gerald Clarke

It is a grand office and a grand desk, as befits the head of one of the world's great opera companies, and at first glance the two objects near the telephone appear incongruous. One is a sign that reads THE BIG TONE. The other is an unopened can of Alpo dog food, a gift from his staff.

In fact they, more than the gilt and the grandeur, sum up the job and the personality of the man who holds it. Anthony Bliss is indeed the Big Tone, the general manager, ultimate authority on everything that occurs at the Metropolitan Opera. And he is also totally committed to his company, so oblivious to almost everything else that he probably could, as his wife once jokingly observed, dine on Alpo dog food and not know the difference.

The Met was always a big organization, but during Bliss's eight-year stewardship it has become a much bigger one, the General Motors of the world's opera companies. A Wall Street lawyer by profession, with close connections to moneyed New York society, Bliss has brought the practices of modern business management to what is, and will always remain, an artistic endeavor.

In large measure, he has succeeded. When he took over in 1974, the deficit was $500,000 and rapidly mounting, threatening the troupe with eventual extinction; last season, despite a budget of $63 million, the Met had a $100,000 surplus.* "We have to raise an enormous amount of money, more than $20 million in annual gifts, to keep the company going," he says. "Since I've been here, fund raising has grown from one man with a couple of secretaries to an office that will soon have 30 or 40 people."

In almost every way, managing the Met is more complicated than it was a decade ago. "It used to be that people bought their tickets at the window," Bliss says. "With the advent of the credit card, most of the purchases are on the telephone. Our subscription list too has changed, from a few people buying a lot of tickets each year to many more people buying a smaller number. In the early '50s we had around 8,000 subscribers. Last year we had 28,000. All of this means a great increase in administration."

Despite his background of Groton, Harvard and Wall Street, Bliss, 69, almost grew up in the opera house. His father, Cornelius Newton Bliss, was the president of a textile firm. He owned a box in the grand tier, the so-called Diamond Horseshoe, of the old Metropolitan Opera House, and he was chairman of the board from 1938 to 1946. Anthony attended his first performance when he was six, hearing Enrico Caruso in I Pagliacci, and when his father died in 1949, he was automatically offered a seat on the governing board. "I was aware of the kind of problems that faced opera for as long as I could remember," he says, "and I suppose that I got my knowledge of opera by osmosis."

By the '50s the house at Broadway and 39th Street, which was built in 1883, was outmoded, and Bliss became a chief proponent of a move to a new structure in Lincoln Center. He won his argument, and the company journeyed north in 1966. But following a feud with Rudolf Bing, the Met's impresario from 1950 to 1972, he was pushed aside as board president. When Bing's successor, Schuyler Chapin, failed to curb the escalating deficits, Bliss was brought in as a salaried executive to put the house in order.

Once a week Bliss meets with his chief assistants, a quartet his secretary calls the "four Js: Joan, Joe, John and Jimmy." With their surnames attached they are known as Joan Ingpen, the scheduling wizard; Joseph Volpe, overseer of backstage activities; John Dexter, the production adviser; and James Levine. That weekly meeting enables Bliss to get the view from all four sides of the big house. "Sometimes," he observes, "an artistic decision will create a technical problem or a box office or funding problem. When you choose a new production, you also have to ask the question: Is this a work we can get funding for?" There are, he notes, only a few people who are willing to sponsor contemporary works.

"Two major factors have made the operation of an opera house much more complicated than it once was. One is the jet plane, which enables singers to move about the world rapidly. The second is the change in the recording market. It used to be that the largest number of classical records was sold in the U.S., so that every singer wanted to develop an American audience. Now the major record market is overseas. In the Bing era, casting was done a year or two before the season. Now we have to negotiate as much as five years ahead."

Although Bliss has ultimate power, he has deliberately assigned creative authority to Levine and the rest of the quartet. "Basically," he says, "I don't consider myself qualified to make musical or even artistic decisions. I exercise veto power only very seldom and with great reluctance. I don't think a traditional impresario could function any longer in this job. There is not enough time to do everything. Levine tells me what he wants, and I may have to go back to him and say, 'We can't afford to use so-and-so because everything he does is too expensive.' I would never say to Jimmy, 'I think Domingo ought to sing that instead of Pavarotti.' I'm a lawyer, not a musician, not a stage director, not a scenic designer, not a singer."

Indeed, critics complain that Bliss has imposed too strong a corporate style on the Met, and that his remoteness from the musicians was a factor in the labor dispute that shut down the company for eleven weeks in 1980. The charge obviously wounds him, and he takes pains to deny it. "The house is so big," he says, "that it doesn't lend itself to a family feeling. But I think we perhaps misjudged the extent of feelings. For months I didn't sleep at night. I would wake up and think, 'What did I do wrong today?' " Now, he says, "I would try to settle a dispute before it gets to the confrontation point. But there's very little I would have done differently."

It is a demanding job, and Bliss works at it almost nonstop five days a week. Only on weekends does he forget about the Met. Then he retires to his country home in Oyster Bay, Long Island, and renews his acquaintance with Sally, his third wife, who is director of the Jeffrey II ballet troupe, and their two sons, 14 and twelve. He putters in the garden, raises such wild game as pheasant and quail in his duck pond and plays tennis. He also listens to music, the kind that soothes and softens a Sunday. Chamber music, of course.

--By Gerald Clarke. Reported by Maureen Dowd/New York

*Ticket prices have kept pace with the budget. In 1974 the cheapest seat was $3; it is now $11. The most expensive has risen from $35 to $65.

With reporting by Maureen Dowd This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.