James Levine is Stepping Down
especially since criteria are strict.
When works were written by geniuses to be performed by others hardly less so
it is likely it will be sooner rather than later that someone has to go.
After all, we don't expect those who climb a Mount Everest
to simultaneously play and/or conduct during the quest
to simultaneously play and/or conduct during the quest
conquering fears
as well as years
in direct competition with their own youth
previously recorded with such unkind truth.
So, as is the destiny of Man,
it is now up to the next generation
to gain, if they can,
their own forty years--or minutes?-of veneration.
HzL
4/15/16
He struggled with health problems and surgeries for years, and missed two full seasons after a serious spinal injury in 2011. But James Levine, whose name became virtually synonymous with the Metropolitan Opera since becoming its music director four decades ago, always seemed to battle back, even conducting from a motorized wheelchair in recent years.
But his health battles have made it difficult to focus on a daunting range of responsibilities over the company’s artistic direction. And this season his body rebelled again, as complications related to his Parkinson’s disease sometimes caused his left arm to flail and made it increasingly difficult for performers to follow his conducting. So on Thursday, after a vigorous internal debate in recent months over his future, the Met announced that Mr. Levine, 72, would step down after this season to become music director emeritus, a position in which he would still conduct.
Mr. Levine summoned the orchestra and chorus to an unusual meeting Thursday afternoon in List Hall, a small auditorium at the opera house, to deliver the news. There he spoke frankly about his health and his love of the company, according to several people who attended, and at one point quoted a letter about artistic integrity by Samuel Beckett. Some listeners grew teary, and at the end Mr. Levine’s colleagues gave him what so many audiences had over the years: a standing ovation.
James Levine at the Metropolitan Opera
Mr. Levine returned to the Met to conduct Mozart’s “Così Fan Tutte” in 2013, after two years’ absence.
By Metropolitan Opera on September 23, 2013. Watch in Times Video »
“For more than four decades the Met has been my artistic home, and I am tremendously proud of all we have been able to achieve together as a company,” Mr. Levine said in a statement, “from expanding the repertory to include new and seldom-heard works, to the development of the orchestra and chorus into one of the glories of the musical world.”
“Although I am unable to spend as much time on the podium as I would like,” he added, “I am pleased to step into my new role and maintain my profound artistic ties to the Met.”
His retirement marks the end of an era at the Met — and of an important period in New York City’s cultural history. Since his debut in 1971, Mr. Levine has conducted 2,551 performances with the company, a dedication to a single institution that is almost unheard of in an age of jet-setting maestros. He became the Met’s music director in 1976, when Gerald R. Ford was the president, Abraham Beame was mayor and Reggie Jackson was just deciding to join the Yankees.
But if his departure solves one problem, by addressing a situation that some at the opera house had warned was growing untenable, it also raises new questions about the next chapter at the Met, which is facing financial challenges and box office struggles.
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