AboutUnder the leadership of James Levine, the Metropolitan Opera is now in a golden age. Levine made his debut there in 1971, becoming Principal Conductor in 1973, Music Director in 1976, and Artistic Director (the first in the Company's history) in 1986. During his tenure at the Met, he has developed the orchestra and chorus to an unparalleled level of achievement, excellence and public recognition. Levine spends more than seven months each year with the Company (unique in today's music world) and has led numerous house premieres -- including works by Mozart, Verdi, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Weill, Berg, Gershwin, Rossini and Corigliano -- as well as an enormous number of works from the standard and not-so-standard repertoires. The Met has recently announced two new commissions -- by Tan Dun and Tobias Picker -- to be conducted by Maestro Levine in the first years of the new millennium. This season at the Metropolitan, he will lead a new production of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde -- the first at the Met in 25 years -- as well as several major revivals (including Verdi's Otello with Plácido Domingo, Schoenberg's Moses und Aron, Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande and Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann), three cycles of Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen and the world premiere performances of John Harbison's The Great Gatsby (commissioned in honour of the 25th anniversary of his Met debut). Among his many recordings for Sony Classical with the Met Orchestra are Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer (S2K 66342); Verdi's Il trovatore (S2K 48070), Aida (S3K 45973),Luisa Miller (S2K 48073) and Don Carlo (S3K 52500); Berg's Suite from Lulu; Three Excerpts from Wozzeck; Three Pieces for Orchestra (SK 53959). Scheduled for release in November of 1999 is the soundtrack for Fantasia 2000 (SK 65995), also featuring the pianist Yefim Bronfman and the Chicago Symphony and Philharmonia Orchestras. Maestro Levine has led the Metropolitan Opera on many domestic and international tours, including a visit to Expo '92 in Seville, tours to Frankfurt -- in 1994 for its 1200th anniversary celebration in 1994 and again in 1996 -- and three visits to Japan since 1988. The company telecasts several productions around the world each season, broadcasts each week from December to April on radio across North America (and regularly across Europe) and appears on an extensive library of studio recordings. Following the tremendous success of their first concert tour in 1991, the Met Orchestra and James Levine have initiated an annual series of orchestral programs with international soloists, including three performances each season in New York's Carnegie Hall and more across America and Europe. (This season's concert soloists include Evgeny Kissin, Olga Borodina, Sylvia McNair, Anne Sofie von Otter and Samuel Ramey.) Levine performs regularly with the Vienna Philharmonic in Vienna and also in European capitals, the United States and the Far East. He also works each season with the Berlin Philharmonic, has had a long association with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (including 20 years as Music Director of the Ravinia Festival, where the orchestra is in summer residence), and is a regular guest with the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Dresden Staatskapelle, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 1999 he became Chief Conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, having made his debut there in 1997. At the Bayreuth Festival he conducted Wagner's Parsifal annually between his 1982 debut there (conducting the Centennial Production of the work) and 1993, and from 1994 until 1998 he directed Der Ring des Nibelungen in a staging by Alfred Kirchner and Rosalie. Beginning in 1996 he has conducted an extended World Tour with "The Three Tenors". More recently, in the summer of 1999, he conducted the orchestra of Philadelphia's Curtis Insitute of Music at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland and returned to the Aspen Festival in Colorado (where he spent fifteen summers between 1957-1974) for two concerts to celebrate the Festival's 50th anniversary. He is also a distinguished pianist and an active recital collaborator, especially in Lieder and song repertoire. James Levine has the distinction of being the first recipient of the annual cultural award of the City of New York. He was named Musician of the Year by the journal Musical America and was the subject of a cover story in Time Magazine. He has lectured at Harvard, Yale, Sarah Lawrence College and The Juilliard School and is the subject of a full-length documentary which has been televised in Europe and the United States.
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James Levine
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James Levine Newsletter |
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James Levine Discography (18titles)
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