Start-Up at the New Met: The Metropolitan Opera Broadcasts, 1966-1976.(Book review)

* Start-Up at the New Met: The Metropolitan Opera Broadcasts, 1966-1976, by Paul Jackson. Amadeus Press, (www.amadeuspress.com; 1(800) 637-2852), 2006. 640 pp. $49.95.

Opera lovers who revel in the memories of those unforgettable Saturday afternoon Met broadcasts will probably recognize Paul Jackson's two prior books: Saturday Afternoons at the Old Met, chronicling the years 1931 through 1950, and Sign-Off for the Old Met, ending in 1966. Jackson's latest volume, Start-Up at the New Met, begins where the second ended, taking readers through Met radio offerings over the next 10 years. The "new Met," of course, is at Lincoln Center and the years spanned cover the final reign of Rudolf Bing and the arrival of James Levine. Beginning with the new house's premiere production, Samuel Barber's Antony and Cleopatra, and concluding with what the author terms a "feast of Italian operas" at the decade's close, Jackson comments on the voices that one would have heard over the airwaves. The reader "hears" through Jackson's descriptions the pros and cons of the performances of the likes of Richard Tucker, Mirella Freni, Peter Pears, Grace Bumbry, and two tenors who, Jackson notes "with some foreknowledge," would become major forces: Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti. Jackson also comments on the batons that set the productions' paces: conductors such as Karl Bohm, Raphael Kubelik and, of course, Levine. The author liberally illustrates his history with ...