Rudolf Bing was born on Jan. 9, 1902, in Vienna. His father, Ernst, was an industrialist, and his mother, Stefanie, was an amateur singer. Rudolf was the youngest of four children in a musical household. He took singing lessons and was said to have developed a good repertoire of lieder, or concert songs. His family hosted chamber music parties and attended the opera, but Rudolf was the first to make a career in music. He studied at the University of Vienna and worked in a Viennese bookshop whose proprietor also ran a concert agency. Bing made many contacts during his years there that led him to abandon any thought of a career in publishing and devote himself instead to opera. By 1928 Bing was a music agent. That year Carl Ebert, the general manager of the Hessian State Theater in Darmstadt, hired him.

From 1928 to 1930 Bing assisted Ebert in Darmstadt. From 1930 to 1933 they managed the Civic Opera in Berlin-Charlottenburg. When Hitler came to power Bing and Ebert left the country. They arrived in England around the time an opera company was founded in Sussex by a wealthy Englishman named John Christie. Christie hired Carl Ebert to be his artistic and stage director at the Glyndebourne Opera Company, founded especially for the production of Mozart operas. Rudolf Bing was charged with finding talented singers from many countries for the debut season of 1934. In 1935 Bing was named general manager of the company, which was an immediate success. The company suspended operations during World War II but it resumed production after the war, and Bing continued as general manager until 1949.

During the war years Bing worked at a department store, but his mind was focused on hopes for a new festival of theater, music, opera, and dance like that in Salzburg, Austria. In 1946 Bing and his wife became British subjects, and the following year the city of Edinburgh and the Arts Council of Great Britain jointly sponsored the first Edinburgh Festival. Bing was artistic director of the festival from the incorporation of the Edinburgh Festival Society in 1946 until 1949. At the 50th anniversary season celebration in 1997 there was a performance of ‘The Cocktail Party' by T.S. Eliot, which was first performed at Bing's 1949 Edinburgh Festival.

In the spring of 1949 the board of directors of the Metropolitan Opera Association unanimously selected Bing as their new managing director. His selection came as a surprise both to opera fans in the United States and to Bing himself. In 1950 Bing went to the United States as general manager of the Met. He served in that capacity for more than 20 years.

The Bing era included many milestones, as well as a continuous supply of gossip. The impresario had reported clashes with such noted stars as Maria Callas and Beverly Sills, but he did manage to keep a roster of singers that was international and well respected. Bing was credited with bringing premieres of Samuel Barber's ‘Vanessa' and ‘Antony and Cleopatra', as well as Marvin David Levy's ‘Mourning Becomes Electra'. Bing was friendly with painter Marc Chagall and arranged for him to paint large murals at the new Metropolitan. Chagall also designed a 1967 production of Mozart's ‘The Magic Flute' that was said to have been one of Bing's favorites. His attention to minutiae of lighting, stage direction, and set design was new to operatic impresarios in the United States, and his success in these areas was widely imitated in the opera world.

Bing hired James Levine for his conducting debut in 1971, and Levine remained an important figure at the Met, becoming the company's artistic director in 1983. He also hired Joseph Volpe, who became the Met's general manager after rising in the ranks from working on the sets as a carpenter. Bing resigned from the Met in 1972 and published an autobiography that same year. He was knighted in 1971 by Queen Elizabeth II.

Bing taught at Brooklyn College from 1972 to 1975 and then worked at Columbia Artists Management. Bing married his first wife, Nina, a Russian-born dancer, in 1929. She died in 1983. In 1987 Bing married Carroll Lee Douglass, but due to Bing's failing health the marriage was annulled in 1989.

Bing was the author of ‘5,000 Nights at the Opera' (1972) and ‘A Knight at the Opera' (1981). He was awarded honorary doctorates from several universities in the United States. His other honors included France's Legion of Honor (1958), Germany's Commander's Cross of Order of Merit (1958), Austria's Grand Silver Medal of Honor (1959), and Italy's Commander Order of Merit (1959). He died on Sept. 3, 1997.