Part 51

His recollections of those years were carefully recorded in his first book, The Paris Diary, published in 1966 amid fanfare on both sides of the Atlantic. It was quickly followed by The New York Diary, which was more popular still. Since then, Rorem's books have appeared at fairly regular intervals, all of them either diaries or essays, or a combination of both.

In print, Rorem comes across as being somewhat disillusioned with life and art. In person, however, he is a warm, sincere host. With a tendency toward shyness that does not come through in his books. Rorem makes all of his remarks so matter-of-factly that nothing he says seems vicious or outrageous.

Leaning back on the sofa of his large Westside apartment, with one hand resting against his chin and the other stroking his pet cat Wallace, Rorem answers one of the first questions saying that yes, he is upset by the negative review that An Absolute Gift received in the New York Times.

"A bad review in the Times can kill a book," he explains. "It killed my last book. And I don't think it's fair that they gave my new book to the same reviewer. He made some of the same statements that he did last time, with almost the same wording. But just today I got a very good review from the Washington Post. And I hope there will be something in the New York Review of Books. That's even more important than the Times."

Rorem is considerably more versatile as a composer than as a writer. His output includes five operas, three symphonies, and "literally hundreds of vocal pieces for solo voice and ensembles of various sizes. And instrumental music of every description." He is considered by many to be the world's greatest living composer of art songs. Generally he sets other people's words to music. Asked for the definition of an art song, Rorem says, "I hate the term. I composed dozens of arts songs before ever hearing the word. It's a song sung by a trained singer in concert halls."

The piece that won him the Pulitzer, surprisingly, was not a song at all, but an orchestral work titled Air Music, which was commissioned for the U.S. Bicentennial by the late Thomas Schippers and the Cincinnati Symphony. This summer the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy will premiere a new, major composition of Rorem's, Sunday Morning.

"I feel very, very, very lucky that I'm able to support myself as a composer of serious music," he says. "My income is not so much from royalties as from commissions, prizes, fellowships, and official handouts, such as the National Endowment of the Arts, and the Guggenheim Fellowship, which I now am living on."

Born in Indiana and raised in Chicago, Rorem began composing music at the age of 10. He was never attracted to pop music, and today he likes it less than ever. "Inasmuch as pop music goes hand in hand with high volume, I bitterly resent it," he says. "When the Met Opera gives a concert in Central Park the same night that the Schaefer Beer Festival gives one of their concerts, they're crushed like the runt beneath the belly of a great fat sow."

When a desire for more space and lower rent drove Rorem from Greenwich Village to the West Side 10 years ago, he feared that he was moving to "a big, nonartistic, bourgeois ghetto." He soon changed his mind. In An Absolute Gift he makes the statement: "From 116th Street to 56th Street, the West Side contains more first-rate artists, both performers and creators, than any concentrated neighborhood since Paris in the 1920s."

One of Rorem's favorite Westside businesses is Patelson's Half Price Music Shop at 160 W. 56th Street, right across from the stage door of Carnegie Hall. "It's the best music shop in America," he testifies. "They have everything or they can get it for you."

All of Rorem's books carry a fair amount of philosophy. But the only principle that the artist claims to have stuck by during the entire course of his life is: "I've never sold out. I've never done what I didn't want to do. ... I've never been guided by other than my heart. And certainly not by money."

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WESTSIDER JULIUS RUDEL Director of the New York City Opera

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In 1943, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia made an announcement that the old Mecca Temple on West 55th Street would be converted into the City Center of Music and Drama. As a result, a new major company was born -- the New York City Opera.

A young Jewish immigrant, Julius Rudel, who had fled Austria with his family not long before, immediately went to City Center in search of a job. He was hired as a rehearsal pianist, and in the years to come his talents blossomed forth in many areas. Working quietly behind the scenes, he became the Opera's indispensable Mr. Everything, who not only knew every phase of show production, but could be called on to conduct the orchestra and even take the place of a missing cast member on stage. Rudel's versatile musicianship and his personal charm did much to knit the company together.

In 1956 the New York City Opera suffered a financially disastrous season that led to the resignation of the distinguished Erich Leinsdorf as director and chief conductor. That was perhaps the lowest point in the company's history. The board of directors pored over dozens of nominations for Leinsdorf's replacement before they decided on the one person who had the confidence of everybody -- Julius Rudel.

Twenty-two seasons later, he is still firmly in command, and the once struggling City Opera has risen to world prominence. Although its $8 million annual budget is much smaller than that of the Metropolitan Opera and the major houses of Europe, Rudel has been able to get many singers who are unequaled anywhere, and has staged far more new works by living composers than has Lincoln Center's "other" opera house.

Apart from its musical significance, the City Opera has become a sort of living symbol for the arts in America, flourishing in the face of financial hardships, and somehow emerging more creative, more artistically exciting because of those hardships. Why else would people like Beverly Sills and Sherrill Milnes perform at City for a top fee of $1,000, or even for free, when they can get $10,000 for a night's work elsewhere?

"We build loyalties," explains Rudel in his delicate Germanic-British accent, the morning after conducting a benefit performance of The Merry Widow. "A lot of our singers go on to other companies, but they come back. They don't forget us. The New York City Opera has produced more great singers than probably any other company in the world."

It is early, even for this man who begins his work as soon as he get up and keeps going till late at night with his multiple roles as music director, chief conductor, administrator, impresario and goodwill ambassador. Clad in his colorful dressing gown, his thick silver hair shining, he seems an entirely different person from the magnetic orchestral leader whose presence on the podium generally guarantees a full house. At his expansive Central Park West apartment, he is low-key and to the point, and fiercely proud of the City Opera's achievements.

"We try to look at every opera we do with fresh eyes, as if it had never been done before. We try to reexamine everything about the opera. Sometimes the tradition attached to a work differs from what the composer and librettist intended. ... Tradition was defined by a famous conductor long ago as 'the last bad performance.' For example, in Turandot there's a character who had been traditionally [portrayed] as blind. But it makes no sense in the story for him to be blind, so we don't play him that way. We're restoring the classics, not changing them."

He jumps up to answer the telephone just as his wife Rita enters the room. A slender, dark-haired woman, she is a doctor of neuropsychology at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital and a devoted opera fan. "I'm Mrs. Rudel in the morning," she explains, smiling. She met Julius when they were both at music school. Today, while keeping a close friendship with many of the City Opera's singers, she maintains her own identity to the extent that her medical colleagues sometimes tell her, "I saw you at the opera last night," without realizing that her husband was the conductor.

The Rudels have lived on the West Side ever since they were married 36 years ago. "My wife sometimes says we live within mugging distance of Lincoln Center," says Rudel, his eyes twinkling with impish amusement. "But really, we're confirmed Westsiders. I don't think I ever use any form of transportation from here to the theatre, and I don't eat out much, because my wife is a marvelous cook. Time being so of the essence, we prefer to stay at home."

The City Opera's spring season continues until April 30. Rudel recommends three shows in particular: The Saint of Bleecker Street, The Turn of the Screw, and The Marriage of Figaro, which he is conducting. "I envy all the Westsiders who have the opportunity to come to us," he concludes. "Our seats in the upper reaches of the State Theatre are the best theatrical bargains in the world."

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EASTSIDER DR. LEE SALK America's foremost child psychologist

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