Although Volpe was originally passed over for general manager because of his less-than-lofty social origins, he eventually triumphed over even the Met's entrenched institutional snobbery, finally claiming the job in 1990. He has wielded something close to absolute power ever since -- and in recent months, that power has expanded far beyond his own opera house. "The Met is the 900-pound gorilla," says a representative of one Lincoln Center company. Another complains, "Joe's only interested in the Met -- and in keeping the other institutions in their place."

"When Joe comes into a room and has a need, he's got his blinders on," Sills admits with a sigh. "It's very hard to shout him down."

Volpe justifies his opposition to a new house for City Opera on the grounds of fiscal prudence. "We will not agree to any addition in public space that is not financially self-supporting," he declares. "We're not going to add expense to the Met's annual budget." Nor is he persuaded by the feasibility studies cited by City Opera to prove that it could support a new home. But other Lincoln Center potentates claim that the issue of financial liability is bogus -- "a red herring," as Kellogg puts it.

Sills's well-known penchant for offering conflicting versions of reality is a tendency that prompted one major donor to describe her as "a terrible liar" at a recent gathering.

"This is absolute nonsense," scoffs Martin Segal, Lincoln Center's chairman emeritus. "There is no financial responsibility of any consequence that the Metropolitan Opera has for any shortfall the City Opera or any other constituent incurs."

Other officials offer an alternative reason why Volpe is blocking a house for the City Opera: "He doesn't want the competition," they say, sotto voce. "Sheer jealousy," sneers one.

City Opera managers protest that they are hardly in competition with the Met. "What we've tried to do is establish a very different identity in our choice of repertoire, production style, and the atmosphere of the house," explains Kellogg. "We really do serve a different audience. We were set up to be a people's opera."

None of this has placated Volpe, who is equally exercised about other aspects of the redevelopment plan -- such as a proposal to reroute traffic and make Broadway one-way, forcing uptown traffic to detour via the residential Central Park West. He was particularly appalled by the Gehry dome and arcade, two big-ticket items in a project that has already cost $14 million. "What are we searching for in Manhattan?" he demands. "Open space, sky, air to breathe! Now you're going to make Lincoln Center the second-largest mall in the United States?"

This is an obvious swipe at Marshall Rose, who was responsible for building one of the country's largest shopping complexes, in Columbus, Ohio. "Can you imagine?" Volpe adds, shaking his head in disgust. "Why did we spend that money? I find this incredible. They said you could have shops under the dome. You could sell T-shirts and have vendors go by selling peanuts. You could talk to Michael Eisner and have Disney characters come by and attract children!" He chortles. "Who wants to sell T-shirts out there? The whole thing was ridiculous! So I said, 'No dome! No arcade!' And Beverly supported my position."

Volpe's disdain for Rose as a mall-builder is ironic, considering the slights that Volpe has endured as a former laborer who was seen as lacking sufficient cachet -- not to mention sufficient finesse -- to run the rich and glittering prize of the Met. Such social nuances still surface, albeit behind his back; detractors ooze condescension as they invoke the word "carpenter," and when they describe Volpe's style, "primitive" is a recurring refrain. "It's kind of a clublike atmosphere here. There are rules in a club, and understandings that are never stated," one constituent representative says, choosing his words carefully. "Passionate feeling is one thing, but incivility is another." While Rose, who remains vice-chair of Lincoln Center, has been exquisitely circumspect about his resignation, many insiders shake their heads at the way he was treated -- or "battered," as one puts it.

But as Volpe points out, Beverly Sills was on his side, and it seems to have been her velvet-gloved hand that precipitated the bloody dénouement in which both Rose and Gordon Davis left the stage in quick succession -- hastily followed by Janice Price, the interim executive director, who quit in January.

With his trademark silk bow tie, Paul Kellogg looks jaunty and dapper -- but he also appears to be coiled tight as a spring. Unlike Volpe, with his grand office at the Met, the City Opera head occupies a small underground bunker at the New York State Theater, where he has good reason to seem tense and embattled.

"We just can't achieve the status this company can achieve if we stay here," Kellogg says wearily. "We really feel squeezed out more than we feel like a defector. The City Opera has always been a stepchild, and that's not good enough anymore. It's a little like Harry Potter living in the cupboard underneath the stairs."

For now, Lincoln Center is playing what one insider describes as "a game of chicken" with the City Opera, hoping to call Kellogg's bluff. Sills is publicly derisive about the company's threat to leave Lincoln Center, pointing out that the City Opera has a ten-year lease at the State Theater. But any plan to build another home would be a long-range effort, and the City Opera seems determined to pursue that goal -- aided by an impressive starting pledge of $50 million from Robert Wilson, the company's former chairman, which the organization would otherwise forfeit. "This has stiffened our resolve," says Kellogg.

Since Lincoln Center was built 40 years ago, no constituent has ever picked up its marbles and stomped out in a huff, and many supporters are deeply concerned about the possibility. "City Opera will go elsewhere if we don't accommodate them," warns Martin Segal. "If they leave, the New York City Ballet has to be concerned about who will occupy that space during the weeks the City Opera is not there. What about the shortfall in dollars?"

It's like a game of musical chairs: If City Opera bails out of the State Theater, the New York City Ballet would probably try to fill the empty weeks there with the American Ballet Theatre. Since ABT currently performs at the Met, that would leave the Met with a hole in its own schedule to fill. The City Opera would also have to fill the weeks it didn't use at its own new house -- all of which would create a great deal of competition for bookings among the various organizations.

One observer says of Sills, "She's very sour about her failures at the New York City Opera, and about the fact that someone could do better. She holds grudges, and she's very jealous."

"I think this is shortsighted; I think Joe is unwise," Segal continues. "In my opinion, the Metropolitan Opera needs and benefits from the existence of the City Opera. Look at the artists who performed at the New York City Opera and went on to the Met!"

Like Beverly Sills, famously shut out by the Met during Sir Rudolf Bing's tenure there. Back then she used to get furious at her mother for reminding her, "If you ain't sung at the Met, you still haven't hit the big time" -- but today she invokes the same quote herself.

Sills was nearing the end of her career when she finally made her Met debut in 1975, before retiring from singing in 1980. Her stellar history with the City Opera has made her ever-more-aggressive alliance with the Met particularly puzzling. City Opera officials were stunned when Sills stepped down as head of the company and, instead of joining its own board, chose the Met. "She left here, walked across the plaza, and went onto the Met's board," marvels one observer, still amazed. Since Sills is a world-class fund-raiser, that was a major loss to City Opera -- but "she's always gone where the money and the glamour are," says Martin Bernheimer, the New York music correspondent for Opera Magazine and the Financial Times.

"There is a really strong bitter streak in Sills, who always felt she had not been given all the things she thought she had coming to her in her career," explains Peter G. Davis, the author of The American Opera Singer (and New York's longtime classical-music critic). "As an arts administrator, she saw a way to get to the top, and she did it. The prestige and power is what she always wanted, the idea that she could be accepted by and be part of the cultural elite in New York City -- and she finally got it."

At this point, even a casual observer can't fail to recognize Sills's antipathy toward Paul Kellogg. Incredibly, she even denies there are acoustic problems for opera at the New York State Theater. "I never had an unhappy moment there," she says majestically. "When I sang there, there were no acoustic problems." Those who knew Sills as an opera singer remember things differently: "She was very concerned about the acoustics when she was there," Davis reports. But these days Sills prefers to imply that Kellogg is a lone malcontent who is manufacturing an imaginary problem. "I'm saying that one voice began making noise about it," she says, her tone icy.

And yet Sills's well-known penchant for offering conflicting versions of reality -- a tendency that prompted one major donor to describe her as "a terrible liar" at a recent gathering, much to the consternation of other Lincoln Center bigwigs in attendance -- manifests itself even within the course of one conversation. When I press her, she concedes that maybe there are acoustic problems at the State Theater after all, but she then attributes them to what she calls "the silos," or wooden panels that were installed some years ago in an attempt to distribute sound more evenly. This contention also amazes City Opera leaders. "She's the one who put them in!" says Sherwin Goldman, executive producer of the City Opera. "She made the additions she would now strip off."

When I mention that I don't understand Sills's animus toward City Opera, one powerful insider sighs and says, "Nobody does. She was spurned by the Met, and she had to make her career abroad and at the New York City Opera, and now she's busy lining up with the Met. It makes no sense, and she has no business taking sides. Going onto the Met board was wrong, as is publicly declaring yourself as favoring one constituent over another. As chairman, she should be having an even hand."

But Sills has always been known as a fierce competitor who is willing to play hardball to achieve her ends. In The American Opera Singer, Davis describes how Sills bullied Julius Rudel, then the City Opera's general director, into giving her the role of Cleopatra he had already promised to Phyllis Curtin: Sills threatened to quit and use her wealthy husband's money to rent Carnegie Hall and perform all of Cleopatra's arias, making Rudel "look sick." Such cutthroat tactics were typical; when Sills replaced Renata Scotto at La Scala and her request for a new costume was denied, she snatched a pair of scissors from the costume designer and sliced Scotto's gown in half. Sills's insatiable need to dominate the limelight even extended to having her manager throw out all La Scala press photos that included her co-star Marilyn Horne.

So is the real issue City Opera's success under Kellogg? "The place has never been better off artistically," reports Davis. "They have one hit after another, and Kellogg has managed to raise attendance in a way Beverly never did. She's very sour about her failures at the New York City Opera, and about the fact that someone could do better. She holds grudges, and she's very jealous."