Levine To Celebrate 40 Years At The Met !

[THEHORN]

Next season, veteran Metropolitan Opera music director will celebrate his 40th year at the Met , and the company will be honoring his great accomplishments there over the years with new CD and DVD releases, according to Playbill Arts .
Levine has conductied nearly 2,500 performances there, an alltime record for the Met.
I was just a teenage opera and classical music freak when he made his Met debut in 1971 with Tosca as an up-and-coming young conductor, and the rest is history.
Levine's achievments at the Met are truly amazing; he built its orchestra into one of the world's finest and established it as a formidable one for orchestral repertoire; he has introduced so many important operas to the Met's repertoire,Lulu,Benvenuto Cellini, The Ghosts of Versailles, I Vespri Siciliani, Bluebeard's Castle, The Damnation of Faust(not really an opera), Idomeneo,La Clemenza Di Tito, Francesca Da Rimini, to name only some.
He has given many of the greatest Wagner performances of our time, and so many other operas by Verdi,Puccini,Mozart, Richard Strauss,
Berg, Debussy, and other composers.
He brought the Met back to the recording studio after many years and recorded the first complete Ring to be made in the US,as well as operas by Mozart, Verdi and Donizetti .
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. He's become such a familiar figure in the incredibly rich and diverse New York classical music scene it's too easy to take him for granted. But we should never do this.
Long may he reign at the Met !

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[aurora]

I make an annual trip to Boston to visit music friends & the precise dates are often dictated by the concert schedule & programmes of the various groups there. This year the Boston Symphony easily trumped all others with Brahms 4th, Renee Fleming, Strauss 4 Last Songs & Mahler 4th all in the same week. We usually catch a BSO concert as part of our trip every year but this was the first time with Levine conducting. It was positively fabulous, but the breaks between movements were almost uncomfortably long while Levine shifted & swiveled around in his chair and moved his legs around. When he first came out on stage I thought he looked a little more fit than my impression of him from pictures, but after that I was definitely wondering about his health so.... long may he reign at Symphony Hall too.

[maestrob]

Levine is probably (along with Abbado) the most consistently satisfying conductor in the world for me, and thankfully I too have followed his journey at the MET with their orchestra turning scrappy but energetic performances in the 1970's to the refined and polished instrument it is today, all thanks to the extraordinary talented Mo. Levine.

In spite of his back problems (hence the chair), long may he reign as the finest conductor in America, and certainly one of the greatest in the world.

Full disclosure: Levine's teacher (Jean Morel) also taught the conductor who taught me conducting at Juilliard.

[stenka razin]

James Levine is deserving of our great appreciation. His 40 years at the Met have been wonderful. Hopefully he will continue doing what he does best and that is Opera.........His Boston Symphony gig is a another feather in the crown of one of the great Opera maestros.

[Modernistfan]

I join in saluting Maestro Levine! I am worried, though, about his health; the Met and Boston need him!

[Chalkperson]

I agree, he is without question one of the finest Conductors in the US, possible the best of all, long may he continue...