Soprano Kathleen Battle's dismissal from the Metropolitan Opera for "unprofessional behavior" was front page news-above the fold!-in 1994. To my knowledge, Ms. Battle has not sung a staged opera since that time. She was fired from the Met after sixteen yeas and over 200 performances. Her long time champion, indeed the man who discovered her teaching school in Cincinnati, James Levine, made no move to intervene. The dismissal was at the hands of the Met's formal and formidable general manager Joseph Volpe, who declared publicly: Basta. Enough.
The stories of Kathleen Battle's temper and disdain for colleagues were legion. There's the time she called her agent in New York from the back of a limo in Japan ordering him to call the driver and get the A.C. turned down. There's the time she threw a colleague's belongings into the hallway outside a favored dressing room . She skipped rehearsals, or appeared late when she deigned to appear at all. Colleagues on stage were ordered not to look at her. All of these stories were great fun but indicative of a gifted artist in trouble.
Volpe was compared in the press to Rudolph Bing, who (in)famously fired Maria Callas from the Met in 1958. We know now that lady engineered her dismissal to accept more lucrative concert dates. All we knew about Battle is that she was trouble.
Make no mistake. Kathleen Battle is an exquisite artist. She's the real deal, always has been:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEQO4_6O38M
Now the Met has announced Kathleen Battle's return to that stage to present a concert of spirituals on November 13. That she would accept a staged run of opera anywhere at age 67 is unlikely.
Kathleen Battle: Underground Railroad, a Spiritual Journey is a program she has been touring successfully for several years. If no opera company would have her, she's kept quite busy in concerts and the recording studios. These forays have not been without reports of "difficulty." No matter. Met general manager Peter Gelb said last week, "Ever since I was appointed to the Met, I've been trying to convince Kathy to return to the opera house. She is in great voice and this will be an important event for the Met and the public."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdTwp6zc8MY
An important event for a Met that in 2016 needs desperately some box office and public relations magic. What an irony if Kathleen Battle's return stimulates the public to fill the house once more, for her night and for every night.
