Sir Rudolf Bing, KBE (January 9, 1902 – September 2, 1997) was an Austrian-born British opera impresario who worked in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, most notably being General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City from 1950 to 1972. He was naturalized as a British subject in 1946 and was knighted in 1971, although he spent decades living in the United States, where he died. Life and career Early years Born Rudolf Franz Joseph Bing in Vienna, Austria-Hungary to a well-to-do Jewish family (his father was an industrialist). Bing was an apprentice to a bookseller at the prestigious Viennese shop of Gilhofer & Ranschburg before moving on to Hugo Heller, who also ran a theatrical and concert agency. He then studied music and art history at the University of Vienna. In 1927, he went to Berlin, Germany, and subsequently served as general manager of opera houses in that city and in Darmstadt. While in Berlin he married a Russian ballerina, Nina Schelemskaya-Schlesnaya. In 1934, with the rise of Nazi Germany, the Bings moved to the United Kingdom, where, in 1946, he became a naturalised British subject. There, together with Fritz Busch and Carl Ebert, he helped to found the Glyndebourne Festival Opera. After the war in 1947, he co-founded and was the first director of the Edinburgh International Festival in Scotland. Metropolitan Opera In 1949, he moved to the United States, and became General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera the following year, a post he held for 22 years. During the 1960s, he supervised the move of the old Metropolitan on Broadway and 39th Street, to its new quarters in Lincoln Center and presided over one of the most prominent eras of the Met. It was summed up in 1990 by James Oestreich in The New York Times as follows: "Wielding his powerful position at the Metropolitan Opera with intense personal charisma over two decades, Sir Rudolf Bing ruled much of the operatic universe in autocratic fashion, nurturing young artists and cutting superstars down to size with equal enthusiasm. He oversaw the abandonment in 1966 of the stately but somewhat dilapidated old Metropolitan Opera House [which he then had razed] and the construction of a grand monument to his regime, the building the company now occupies, which dominates Lincoln Center. His conservative musical and dramatic bent, preference for Italian opera and concern for theatrical