Lost Together in Paradise

By James Kelly

For 22 years Sir Rudolf Bing ran a great opera house as if it were his own home. Of sharp tongue and sharper mind, Sir Rudolf tended to every detail at New York City's Metropolitan Opera -- planning the season's repertoire, hiring (and firing) conductors, checking the seamstresses as they worked on costumes. And the divas! Bing did not suffer singers gladly, and prided ) himself on his ability to control prima donnas, cajoling Montserrat Caballe or flaying Maria Callas with equally imperious vigor. In the years immediately following his retirement as general manager in 1972, Bing could still be spotted around town, often dressed in white tie and tails and always in the best company.

Sir Rudolf Bing was spotted in the Caribbean last week, but this time occasionally mumbling "What day is it?" and in the company of a woman with a troubled past. His mind enfeebled by Alzheimer's disease, Bing, now 85, has been living for the past week in a modest two-story bungalow on the island of Anguilla with Carroll Douglass, fortyish, whom he met last year. If she is to be believed, the two are "totally in love" and on their honeymoon; if Bing's court-appointed protectors are to be believed, Bing, a widower and childless, is being victimized by a mentally confused woman. Whatever the legal resolution may be, the beach tableau of this forlorn couple in their palm- fringed haven, with meager funds and not many friends, seemed ineffably sad.

Sometimes Douglass claims Bing introduced himself to her at a Met performance of Parsifal; at other times she says they met in the lobby of his Manhattan apartment building. Bing, whose mental acuity apparently started to decline seriously after his wife of 54 years died in 1983, began writing checks to Douglass. The spending caught the eye of Lawyer Paul Guth, a longtime associate whom Bing once designated to be in charge of his personal affairs in the event he became incapacitated. Concerned, Guth filed a petition to declare Bing incompetent; a legal guardian and conservator were appointed, and Bing's estimated assets of $900,000 were frozen.

By this time the couple had slipped out of New York and married in Virginia. The new Lady Bing, as she calls herself, fled with her husband by Trailways bus to Florida, then headed to Anguilla. There, questioned by reporters last week, she gave her life story, but the versions began to multiply. Had she been married before? No. Well, in fact it turned out she had been, twice. Second Husband William Rickenbacker, investment counselor and son of World War I Flying Ace Eddie Rickenbacker, told the New York Daily News that she was "quite mad."

He is not alone in thinking her mentally disturbed. In 1982 a District of Columbia judge appointed Douglass's brother and sister conservators of her affairs on the ground that, among other things, she "had acquired a romantic and unreasonable fixation for the person of the Pope." According to court documents, she once tried to become the Pontiff's helicopter pilot and attempted to purchase Rolls-Royces for his use.

As Douglass sits in the bungalow's tiny kitchen and talks about hiring a barrister, Sir Rudolf stares into the distance and seems happy enough. He calls her "Carroll sweetheart" but usually talks only when prompted by her, saying a few lucid words before sliding again into a kind of dreamy trance. Sir Rudolf may not be in Anguilla after all, but back home at the Met, savoring a favorite performance of La Traviata or something he said to Maria Callas in 1958.

With reporting by JoAnn Lum/New York and Bill Steif/Anguilla