Classical
Joseph Volpe
Rudolf Bing may have been wittier and Edward Johnson suaver, but as Metropolitan Opera general managers go, no one has been tougher than Joe Volpe. When he took over in 1990, the Met had been a chaotically run mess for more than fifteen years. The buck stopped nowhere. Suddenly it did with Volpe, and if anyone doubted his authority at first, that ceased after he fired the combative diva Kathleen Battle for “unprofessional actions” in 1994. Under Volpe, the roster of stars has grown, and the Met’s day-to-day functioning remains the envy of opera houses the world over. He wraps his final season in May (and cedes the job to Peter Gelb in August), and then—well, “some people say I’m retiring,” he said recently. “Heaven forbid. I would never retire.”