Here’s the version given to house mouthpiece Opera News:
The Metropolitan Opera announced today that James Levine, the company’s music director since 1976, will retire at the end of the company’s current season for health reasons.
Capping an historic, forty-year tenure, Levine will assume the new position of Music Director Emeritus next season, the company announced, where he will continue as the artistic leader of the Met’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, and will continue to conduct some Met performances.
The company intends to appoint a new music director at the Met in the coming months. The Met also announced that John Fisher, currently the company’s director of music administration, has immediately been promoted to the role of Assistant General Manager, Music Administration. Fisher’s duties include overseeing the company’s staff conductors, rehearsal pianists and prompters; coaching principal singers; and working with Maestro Levine and the conductors for each Met performance to prepare and maintain the company’s musical quality.
Levine has withdrawn from conducting the Met’s new production of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier next season, but the company reported that he intends to lead revivals of Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algeri, Verdi’s Nabucco and Mozart’sIdomeneo. This season, he will conduct the company’s remaining performances of Simon Boccanegra as well as five performances of the company’s revival of Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail in April; he will also lead the Met Orchestra in May 19 and 26 concerts at Carnegie Hall, though he will not lead the orchestra in a concert scheduled for May 22 at Carnegie.
No-one was in any doubt that James Levine was a rare talent. His Met debut in June 1971, aged 27, led to him being appointed principal conductor the following winter and music director in 1976. No conductor has enjoyed so long or intimate an association with America’s greatest opera house.
Levine created the best – and best-paid – opera orchestra in the country. He attracted the finest singers and won their total confidence. He gently nudged the static repertoire into the 20th century.
He was, in many ways, the making of the Met.
But his horizons were narrow. Outside of music he had few interests. Outside of the Met, few friends. He was protected from the world by a tough agent, Ronald Wilford, and an expensive personal entourage. He required record fees to pay for his retinue.
His musical ability was greater than his emotional intelligence. When Wilford died, he failed to make an appearance at the memorial service, unaware of how demeaning this appeared.
Severe illness impaired his capacity to conduct. He clung on with something like desperation, pleading with the Met’s manager, Peter Gelb, to let him keep the job.
For New Yorkers, the change is epochal. Alan Gilbert, music director of the Philharmonic, tweets: Wow–still processing news of Levine’s impending retirement. Not just an end of an era, it’s the end of THE era.
The Metropolitan Opera has announced that its music director will retire at the end of the season.
Levine, 72, has held the post since 1976. In recent years he has been confined to a wheelchair and his beat has been affected by a tremor. There would be speculation on premiere days whether he was fit to conduct that night.
Levine did not want to go. He showed the Met and the New York Times medical certificates indicating the he was fit to stay. But after a recent Simon Boccanegra wobble the board insisted he went.
Now, the agony is over, along with the indignity.
James Levine has lived to witness his own history.
Friends are mourning the passing of Kate Light, a published poet, Hunter College teacher and a violinist in the New York City Opera orchestra. Kate, who was in her 50s, endured a struggle with breast cancer.
Among other works, she wrote librettos for two operas and a stage musical.
The long-serving music director left La Scala on May 2, 2005 after conducting a concert with the Vienna Philharmonic. He has not crossed its threshold since.
This summer, the maestro will turn 75. La Scala is putting on an exhibition of his life and work.
We hear that Riccardo Muti agreed today to attend the opening and meet the public in the main Piermarini hall.
Expect a press release later.
Hats off to Anna Clyne, who has just won the career-boosting 20k Hindemith Prize.
Anna, 36, a born Londoner, studied in Manhattan and has made her home there. She served five years as composer in residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
A sharp-eyed Slipped Disc readers has spotted the following on the BBC Radio 3 site:
Bryn Terfyl(sic) performing the title role in Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov.
The John Wilson Orchestra performing the best of Ira Gershwin, marking the 120th anniversary of the composer’s (!) birth.
Ten cello concertos, starting with Elgar’s Cello Concerto, performed by Sol Gabetta on the First Night(all 10 performed on 1st night?)
Given her own background, as well as the long tradition of openness toward female composers and conductors in the Baltic nations, Gražinytė-Tyla cannot quite grasp the fuss being made about her sex. “But I accept I must still be a cheerleader,” she says. “Mothers come up to me and thank me for setting an example to their daughters. And I am happy to take that responsibility. I grew up without imagining any problems. I hope those who come after me will think it quite normal.”
First responses to the 2016 season are that it’s a Volkswagen designed by committee.
Under the headline ‘Few surprises but a solid programme’, Andrew Clements in the Guardian puts it succinctly: Roger Wright stepped down as Radio 3 controller and director of the Proms at the beginning of the 2014 season, and with no carefully choreographed succession in place, his permanent replacement,David Pickard, who was previously general director at Glyndebourne, only took up his post last autumn. During the 15-month interregnum, the role was taken by Radio 3 editor Edward Blakeman, with the result that the recently announced 2016 season is effectively the combined work of three planners.
The other dailies are in strictly promo mode, offering a highlights guide and a gushy star interview.
The website has not been designed to enable an easy search of composers and works. While several artists make notable and (in some cases) much-belated debuts, the lineup looks a bit like Manchester United this season – either a work in progress or a side in decline, depending on one’s loyalty.
Slipped Disc will provide a more detailed appreciation next week with reference to some glaring omissions of notable anniversaries. At first glance, though, this is not a season that makes the heart beat faster.
The most accomplished violinist ever to emerge from New Zealand, Alan Loveday – who has died at 88 – shot to the front of a competitive field in 1950s London as a star student of Max Rostal.
A prizewinner in a Prague competition, he played lots of chamber music and was on call for the leading orchestras without ever forming a settled relationship until his pal Neville Marriner formed the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. Installed as leader (concertmaster) he had his own way of doing things.
Neville and other players talked to me about the epic day at Abbey Road when they recorded Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, still relatively unfamiliar on record. The morning session was a washout, not a usable phrase recorded on tape. At lunch, the players dispersed for refreshment, some to local pubs.
Alan was a bit of a drinker in those days. He returned to the studio visibly the worse for wear. Neville was beginning to wonder who he would get to play Vivaldi’s tricky solos when Alan, tucking his fiddle under his chin, blazed through the work in a single take.
The 1969 white-heat recording sold half a million copies and launched the Academy as a global brand. You can read the full story in my book, The Life and Death of Classical Music.
Rest well, Alan.
They don’t make them like that any more.
The Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra – RSO Wien – is in the market for a music director.
Cornelius Meister, 36, says he won’t renew beyond 2018, by which time he will have been in the job for eight years, longer than any predecessor. He’s looking to make his mark on the world circuit after useful debuts at Covent Garden and Washington DC.
