Music: Safe at Home

Clarence W. Miles, 56, is a corporation lawyer and a proud Baltimorean. Last fall, almost singlehanded, he worked the deal that brought the St. Louis Browns to Baltimore as the Orioles, thus ending the city’s 51-year exile from major-league baseball (TIME, Oct. 12). But now a new crisis agitated Good Citizen Miles. Having regained baseball, Baltimore stood to lose opera.

The Metropolitan Opera, which has been playing Baltimore on and off for the last 70 years, decided to hike its required guarantee for each performance from $16,000 to $20,000. Manager Frederick R.

Huber of the Lyric Theater, the Met’s Baltimore home, came out flatly against the increased guarantee—no more money, he said, even if that means no more opera.

Alerted to this situation by his fortyish, opera-loving wife Eleanor, Oriole President Miles promptly went into action.

Said he: “The opera is just as important to Baltimore as the Orioles.” He joined forces with members of the Baltimore Opera Club. Last week, in quick, bloodless revolution, the group 1) elected Eleanor Miles vice president; 2) decided on a general rise in ticket prices (e.g., orchestra up from $9 to $10) for Met performances, to provide the guarantee. Lawyer Miles gave all the credit to Eleanor: “I’m just kibitzing . . .

The truth of it is, I never went to the Metropolitan until I married Mrs. Miles two years ago. I let her push me into going, and right away discovered it wasn’t so bad after all. Meanwhile, she had never been to a big-league baseball game, but when we got the franchise, she, for her part, became crazy about it … Now we’re each all wrapped up in the other’s favorite project, and the peace in the Miles household—it’s wonderful.”