NEW YORK -- James Levine is padding around in sneakers in the offices at the Metropolitan Opera.
As artistic director of the Met, he's probably the busiest, most powerful man in the opera world. Yet he exudes charm as he sticks out his hand and beams a big smile.
A tour of his office reveals -- besides autographed photos of opera stars and Bayreuth Ring Festival memorabilia -- a black and white photo of the house in which he grew up in Avondale, taken by a neighbor on a snowy day. It hangs on a bulletin board behind his desk.
He doesn't have to be prodded to talk about his hometown. He will return Wednesday with the Met Orchestra to conduct a special concert as part of May Festival's 125th anniversary season. It's his first trip back since 1980.
"I had a great, great time in Cincinnati," he says. "You feel when you're young, you want to see the world. But the more of the world I saw, the more I appreciated Cincinnati's virtues, deeper and deeper."
Mr. Levine's child-prodigy days are part of Cincinnati music history. He made his Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra debut as piano soloist at age 10 under Thor Johnson. As a plump pre-teen, he would sit for hours at Cincinnati Opera rehearsals at the zoo, inhaling opera scores and imitating Italian conductor Fausto Cleva.
"He knew at early age he wanted to be an opera conductor," says Walter Levin, his first teacher and first violinist in the LaSalle Quartet. "The first time we met, he performed and sang complete scenes at the piano from The Marriage of Figaro and Aida, with his little puppet theater. This was a 10-year-old!"
Mr. Levine became music director of the Cincinnati May Festival in 1974, before he turned 30, and served for five seasons.
"It's very unusual to find a concert hall with that kind of great acoustic in a city of that size," Mr. Levine says. "The May Festival was a kind of phenomenon, even in that time. It was impressive to see the audience turn out for so many different, large-scale works close together. And without a devoted arts community, you don't have that."
Eight-hour tribute
He sinks into a brown leather chair in his tiny office, sipping a cold drink from a coffee mug. Each question triggers a non-stop gush of thought. His trademark blue towel hangs over one shoulder of his white polo shirt. A frizzy light brown halo of hair frames a smooth face seemingly untouched by 54 years of living.
His power is indisputable. Mr. Levine's achievements at the Metropolitan Opera climaxed in April 1996 when a televised gala honoring his 25th anniversary lasted an extraordinary eight hours. Those trilling his praises included almost every conceivable opera star, current and retired.
For 27 years, Mr. Levine has conducted in the pit four or five times a week, amassing a staggering number of more than 1,700 performances. When he became artistic director in 1986, he gained authority over everything that happened onstage, as well as the pit.
In addition to directing Cincinnati's May Festival, he spent 23 summers as music director of the Chicago Symphony's suburban music festival in Ravinia. He led the Vienna Philharmonic for 17 summers in Salzburg. When he departs Bayreuth, Germany after his final Wagner Ring this summer, it will be after 15 years. On July 10, he will conduct a concert with the Three Tenors at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, three days before the World Cup Soccer finals.
|
James Levine 
Born: June 23, 1943 to Helen and Lawrence Levine, Avondale.
Nickname: Jimmy.
Education: Walnut Hills High School (1961) and the Juilliard School of Music. Music theory studies with Walter Levin of the LaSalle Quartet in Cincinnati; with Rosina Lhevinne (piano) and Jean Morel (conducting) at Juilliard; and with pianist Rudolf Serkin at Marlboro Music Festival.
Also studied conducting with conductors Fausto Cleva, Alfred Wallenstein and former CSO music director Max Rudolf. Was assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell (1965-1970).
Lives: Manhattan.
Favorite New York restaurants: San Domenico, Aquavit (Swedish).
First mentor: Walter Levin, Basel, Switzerland, formerly of Cincinnati. "He was a great mentor to me. The cultural world opened to me a certain way, which without him never would have occurred. We are friends now, and we started working together when I was 11. That's an amazing thing."
Musical philosophy: "Getting as close as I can to conveying what the composer wanted the listener to hear and feel. This, of course, is very easy to say and very hard to do."
Worst habit: Talking too much during rehearsals. "But everything he says is important," says concertmaster Raymond Gniewek. "He is one of the few conductors I've ever worked with who is capable of articulating the various musical problems we encounter, analyzing them and putting it into words that can be understood. It's not just vague instructions."
Hobbies: Enjoys nature, visual arts, films, plays, novels and collecting ancient art objects.
|
Work on his own terms
In 1991, he took his Met Orchestra out of the pit for a series of concerts in Carnegie Hall and has built that ensemble into one of the country's best.
Yet, even with such a record, Mr. Levine seems to enjoy making an unpredictable move now and then.
In December, he announced he would accept the music directorship of the Munich Philharmonic in fall 1999. The move puzzled podium-watchers who consider Munich a "second-tier" orchestra, and horrified the Munich City Council, who thought his $1.2 million salary for the 1999-2000 season excessive.
But for Mr. Levine, it was a logical step, allowing him enough flexibility to maintain his 30-week schedule at the Met. In Munich, he can work on his own terms, and rehearsals are not timed by a union clock.
"It's not gridlocked into a system where the concerts have to be on certain days, and the rehearsals have to be a certain way. This is what I need more than anything," he says.
Mr. Levine is, as London's Guardian wrote after a recent guest conducting stint with the Philharmonia, "undoubtedly a force to be reckoned with, a hugely intelligent musician and a master of the conductor's craft."
Firsts in Cincinnati
In 1973, May Festival board president Samuel Pogue invited Mr. Levine to conduct his first May Festival concert during the 100th anniversary season.
"I've always been attracted to the voice and to works with voice and instruments," Mr. Levine says. "The chance to play these works, some of my favorite pieces, was very exciting."
He conducted his first Mahler Symphony No. 8, Symphony of a Thousand, with sopranos Kathleen Battle and Eleanor Steber.
"(Ms. Steber) had never sung it before, and to my knowledge she's never sung it since," he says.
In 1977, he conducted his first Mahler Symphony No. 3, which only had been performed once before (1914) at May Festival. Two decades ago, Mahler symphonies were not as ubiquitous as now.
"People like (Dimitri) Mitropoulos and (William) Steinberg and Lenny (Bernstein) had really put Mahler works in front of the public. But even in my generation, I found myself doing Mahler premieres," he says.
In Cincinnati, he conducted his first performances of Wagner operas Lohengrin, Tannhauser and Parsifal, in concert version for May Festival.
"It was the first practical conducting of those pieces that I have," he says.
He also led his first Haydn oratorio, The Creation, and his first Schoenberg Gurrelieder. He valued the experience of conducting works for large forces and the challenge of putting it all together. "Sometimes when we were rehearsing a piece and there was some miraculous passage in it, I'd find myself saying to the orchestra and chorus, let's just sing that again, because who knows when will be the next time we get a live shot at this piece?" he says.
Long-term relationships
One of his personal highlights was a 1976 concert performance of a Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice with Ms. Battle, the diva whom he has promoted since her University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music days. Ms. Battle, Maria Ewing and Carmen Balthrop, all friends, had asked him for a work they could sing together.
"Well, by God, we scheduled it and we did it. So many people got turned on by this piece in this performance. That was a sleeper of one of those festivals," he recalls.
Another first that Bicentennial year was a concert mounting of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. "It turned out to work wonderfully in concert," Mr. Levine says.
The May Festival was also the beginning of several long-term relationships with singers that spilled over to the Met. French soprano Regine Crespin's appearance in Berlioz's The Trojans in the 1977 festival "was the beginning of a significant extension to her American work, when she hadn't been in America very much," he says.
"We really got such wonderful singers. When you look at the lists . . . there was a great spectrum there. In my last season, we did Handel's (oratorio) L'Allegro and Kathy (Battle) sang in that. She was stunning in it."
His relationship with Ms. Battle revolves around many collaborations over more than 25 years. He continued to perform with her in recital even after she was fired from the Met in 1994 for temperamental behavior. "When you get that sort of artistic rapport, you're very fortunate if you can repeat those experiences," he says.
Conducting Lohengrin
At a recent Saturday matinee at the Met, Mr. Levine is conducting the controversial Robert Wilson production of Wagner's Lohengrin. The austere look, stylized pantomiming and slow-motion staging given to singers Ben Heppner, Deborah Voigt and Cincinnati-trained Deborah Polaski elicited boos on opening night. But no one could argue about the sublime music coming from pit and stage.
When Mr. Levine made his Met debut with Tosca at age 28, concertmaster Raymond Gniewek remarked, "That was the most exciting performance I've played since Karajan conducted us."
"He singlehandedly is responsible for where our orchestra is today," says Mr. Gniewek, a 41-year Met veteran. "We were always a good orchestra, but . . . when Jimmy came in, he started really working with the orchestra. This made the musicians feel much more important for their role in the entire operatic production."
Mr. Levine rarely looks down at the score, but keeps one eye on each musician while he sings silently along with the singers. The orchestra colors each musical phrase to match the text; it is not accompanist, but collaborator.
"There are few conductors in the world who care about the music, and who care about the singers and not about their own itinerary," says Met tenor Jon Fredric West, a Dayton, Ohio, native who recently sang the title role in Tannhauser.
"He has definite concepts about the music, but he's with you all the way. Few conductors can tell you if you're sharp or flat; he gives you wonderful signs that keep you at your best."
A week earlier, when Mr. Levine performed as pianist with singer Hermann Prey in a recital of Schubert lieder, the New York Times reported, "At the piano, James Levine was, of course, a closely sensitive partner throughout, in tune with the twilight."
Out of the pit
When he took the Met Orchestra out of the pit for its own concert series in Carnegie Hall in 1991, Mr. Levine was continuing a tradition set by the Vienna Philharmonic.
"I felt artistically it was such a critical, important thing for us to do," Mr. Levine says. "This orchestra has developed largely because of its attitude, its esprit de corps. They want to solve every problem, and they are daring and willing to take the risk to develop."
The result has been a newfound self-esteem for the orchestra, its concertmaster says.
"In past decades, the press used to call us a pit band, probably the most derogatory thing that can be said about us," Mr. Gniewek says. "Now we've come to be recognized as one of the outstanding orchestras in the country. It gives us a wonderful sense of pride, that we're more than being buried in the pit and have something to work for."
The most obvious difference between playing concerts and playing in the pit is the length of the repertoire, Mr. Gniewek says. "We did (Ravel's) Daphnis et Cloe yesterday, and I hadn't remembered how short this was. Of course, we played (the five-hour) Die Meistersinger the night before!"
Because they are accustomed to working with singers, the musicians have a unique way of looking at symphonic music. "Jimmy emphasizes we play with a singing quality, not just rhythmically and accurately," he says.
Building such an orchestra is "not a blueprint in your head before you start," Mr. Levine says. "It evolves out of the way human relations do, out of your discovering what it needs, and your imagination and intuition and skill, and being there to develop it. "The principal is the same as when I play a lieder recital with a singer. The one-on-one rapport goes back to what happens across the pit when you do operas or oratorios. This process is endlessly thrilling, fascinating and challenging."
Looking ahead to Munich
When the Munich Philharmonic invited him to be its music director, Mr. Levine had already turned down the Philadelphia Orchestra and others. He thought the proximity of an East Coast orchestra would conflict with his New York work.
On the other hand, he was tired of guest conducting, and as he grows older, he feels the need to work closely with an orchestra. "Basically at heart, I'm not a good guest conductor," he says. "In the early years of my guest conducting I was lucky that I could go back regularly to Boston, Philadelphia, Vienna or Berlin. But in recent years, what was disturbing me was that I need some situation where I can do two kinds of things symphonically, which I can't do in the Met."
His first desire is to work in depth on repertoire. His second goal is to perform contemporary music, a longtime love since his early studies with Mr. Levin, whose quartet championed 20th-century composers.
"When I started conducting, I did lots of music that was very new. I enjoyed it and it was stimulating," Mr. Levine says. "As a guest conductor, you can't do it because you've only got one week and those few rehearsals."
By the time an orchestra gives a performance, the conductor should be there "only as a kind of inspirational and technical reminder," he says.
Despite the problems American orchestras face -- declining audiences, decreased government support, escalating costs, labor problems -- Mr. Levine remains optimistic about them. But he believes they may have to change to endure.
"Just as the orchestra has been one of the phenomena of American musical life ever since Theodore Thomas started it, some of these structures will have to change over the next few years," he says. Performing away from traditional settings is part of that; he plans a chamber music series next year for his Met Orchestra players. Mr. Levine can envision himself on the podium of an American orchestra, but not until he leaves the Met. That is something he does not see happening in the next five years, despite speculation surrounding the hiring of conductor Valery Gergiev as principal guest conductor in September.
"Now I'm 54, and somehow, you get into that period where you approach being an older conductor. If you've done it right, maybe your work gets better," he says.
He returns to his thoughts about the May Festival, and about preparing a program in three days, that would normally take five. "There was something about that feeling, which was the chance for the choral groups to be together, and for the orchestra to have to rehearse all of that music very skillfully and quickly," he says.
"Some of that was like a sleight-of-hand trick and you'd think, how did we do that? It was because the esprit de corps was so strong."
