James Levine


James Lawrence Levine is an American conductor and pianist. He is primarily known for his tenure as Music Director of the Metropolitan Opera, a position he held for 40 years. He was formally terminated by the Met from all his positions and affiliations with the company on March 12, 2018 over sexual misconduct allegations, which he denies.
Levine has made numerous recordings, as well as television and radio broadcasts, with the Met. Levine has also held leadership positions with the Ravinia Festival, the Munich Philharmonic, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 1980 he started the Lindemann Young Artists Development Program, and he has often trained promising singers, conductors, and musicians for professional careers.
After taking an almost two-year health-related hiatus from conducting from 2011 to 2013, Levine retired as the Met's full-time Music Director following the 2015/16 season to become Music Director Emeritus.
On December 2, 2017, The New York Times published a front-page story containing detailed accounts of four men in their 40s to 60s alleging their long-term sexual abuse by Levine occurring decades earlier, while each was a music student of his in his teens or early 20s. The following day, the Met suspended Levine and cancelled his future scheduled engagements. The Ravinia Festival also promptly severed all ties with Levine, as did the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which announced that Levine would never again "be employed or contracted by the BSO at any time in the future." Following an investigation that ended in March 2018, having "found credible evidence", the Met terminated its relationship with Levine, for "sexually abusive and harassing conduct".

Early years and personal life

Levine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a Jewish, musical family. His maternal grandfather was a composer and a cantor in a synagogue, his father was a violinist who led dance bands under the name "Larry Lee" before entering his father's clothing business, and his mother was briefly an actress on Broadway, performing as "Helen Golden". He had a brother Tom who was two years younger, who followed him to New York City from Cincinnati in 1974, and with whom he was very close. He employed Tom as his business assistant, and his brother was a painter as well. He also has a younger sister, Janet, who is a marriage counselor.
He began to play the piano as a small child. On February 21, 1954, at the age of 10, Levine made his concert debut as soloist playing Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 2 at a youth concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in Ohio.
Levine subsequently studied music with Walter Levin, first violinist in the LaSalle Quartet. In 1956 he took piano lessons with Rudolf Serkin at the Marlboro Music School in Vermont. In the following year he began to study piano with Rosina Lhévinne at the Aspen Music School. He graduated from Walnut Hills High School, an acclaimed magnet school in Cincinnati. He entered the Juilliard School of Music in New York City in 1961, and took courses in conducting with Jean Morel. He graduated from the Juilliard School in 1964, and joined the American Conductors project connected with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
Levine lives in The San Remo on Central Park West in New York City.

Career

Early career

From 1964 to 1965, Levine served as an apprentice to George Szell with the Cleveland Orchestra. He then served as the Orchestra's assistant conductor until 1970. That year, he also made debuts as guest conductor with the Philadelphia Orchestra at its summer home at Robin Hood Dell, the Welsh National Opera, and the San Francisco Opera. From 1965 to 1972 he concurrently taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In the summers, he worked at the Meadow Brook School of Music in Michigan and at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. During that time, the charismatic Levine developed a devoted following of young musicians and music lovers.
In June 1971, Levine was called in at the last moment to substitute for István Kertész, to lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Mahler's Second Symphony for the Ravinia Festival's opening concert of their 36th season. This concert began a long association with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. From 1973 to 1993 he was music director of the Ravinia Festival, succeeding the late Kertész. He made numerous recordings with the orchestra, including the symphonies and German Requiem of Johannes Brahms, and major works of Gershwin, Holst, Berg, Beethoven, Mozart, and others. In 1990, at the request of Roy E. Disney, he arranged the music and conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in the soundtrack of Fantasia 2000, released by Walt Disney Pictures. From 1974 to 1978, Levine also served as music director of the Cincinnati May Festival.

Metropolitan Opera

Levine made his Metropolitan Opera debut at age 28 on June 5, 1971, leading a June Festival performance of Tosca. Following further appearances with the company, he was named principal conductor of the Metropolitan Opera in February 1972. He became the Met's principal conductor in 1973, and its music director in 1975. In 1983, he served as conductor and musical director for the Franco Zeffirelli screen adaptation of La Traviata, which featured the Met orchestra and chorus members. He became the company's first artistic director in 1986, and relinquished the title in 2004. In 2005, Levine's combined salary from the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Met made him the highest-paid conductor in the country, at $3.5 million.
During Levine's tenure, the Metropolitan Opera orchestra expanded its activities into the realms of recording, and separate concert series for the orchestra and chamber ensembles from The Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Levine led the Metropolitan Opera on many domestic and international tours. For the 25th anniversary of his Met debut, Levine conducted the world premiere of John Harbison's The Great Gatsby, commissioned especially to mark the occasion. On his appointment as general manager of the Met, Peter Gelb emphasized that Levine was welcome to remain as long as he wanted to direct music there. Levine was paid $2.1 million by the Met in 2010.
Following a series of injuries that began with a fall, Levine's subsequent health problems led to his withdrawal from many Metropolitan Opera conducting engagements. Following a May 2011 performance of Die Walküre, Levine formally withdrew from all conducting engagements at the Met. After two years of physical therapy, Levine returned to conducting with a May 2013 concert with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. On September 25, 2013, Levine conducted his first Met performance since May 2011, in a revival production of Così fan tutte. Levine was scheduled to conduct three productions at the opera house and three concerts at Carnegie Hall in the 2013/14 season. On April 14, 2016, Met management announced that Levine would step down from his position as music director at the end of the 2015/16 season. Levine was paid $1.8 million by the Met for the 2015/16 season. He assumed the new title of Music Director Emeritus, which he held until December 2017, when in the wake of allegations that Levine had sexually abused four young men, the Met suspended its relationship with him and cancelled all his future scheduled performances with the company.

Boston Symphony Orchestra

Levine first conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra in April 1972. In October 2001, Levine was named music director of the BSO, effective with the 2004/05 season, with an initial contract of five years, becoming the first American-born conductor to head the BSO.
One unique condition that Levine negotiated was increased flexibility of the time allotted for rehearsal, allowing the orchestra additional time to prepare more challenging works. After the start of his tenure, the orchestra also established an "Artistic Initiative Fund" of about US$40 million to fund the more expensive of Levine's projects.
One criticism of Levine during his BSO tenure is that he did not attend many orchestra auditions. A 2005 article reported that Levine had attended two out of 16 auditions during his tenure up to that time. Levine himself has responded that he has the ability to provide input on musician tenure decisions after the initial probationary period, and that it is difficult to know how well a given player will fit the given position until that person has had a chance to work with the orchestra. He said "My message is the audition isn't everything."
Another 2005 report stated that during Levine's first season as music director, the greater workload from the demands of playing more unfamiliar and contemporary music had increased physical stress on some of the BSO musicians. Levine and the players met to discuss this, and he agreed to program changes to lessen these demands. Levine received general critical praise for revitalizing the orchestra's quality and repertoire since the beginning of his tenure.
Levine had been experiencing ongoing health problems, starting with an onstage fall in 2006 that resulted in a torn rotator cuff and started discussion of how much longer Levine's tenure with the BSO would be. In April 2010, in the wake of Levine's continuing health problems, it emerged that Levine had not officially signed a contract extension, so that Levine was the BSO's music director without a signed contract. On March 2, 2011, the BSO announced Levine's resignation as music director effective September 2011, after the Orchestra's Tanglewood season.
Working on a commission from Levine and the BSO, the composer John Harbison dedicated his Symphony No. 6 "in friendship and gratitude" to the conductor, whose premature departure from the orchestra prevented him from conducting the premiere.
The BSO has not worked with Levine since 2011, and after allegations of his abusing a number of young men came out in December 2017 the BSO said Levine "will never be employed or contracted by the BSO at any time in the future."

Conducting in Europe

Levine's Boston Symphony contract limited his guest appearances with American orchestras, but Levine still conducted regularly in Europe, with the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, and at the Bayreuth Festival. Levine was a regular guest with the Philharmonia of London and the Staatskapelle Dresden. Beginning in 1975 he conducted regularly at the Salzburg Festival and the annual July Verbier Festival. From 1999 to 2004, he was chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, and was credited with improving the quality of instrumental ensemble during his tenure.

Work with students

Levine initiated the Lindemann Young Artists Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera in 1980, a professional training program for graduated singers with, today, many famous alumni.
Levine was conductor of the UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra, the student resident orchestra at the annual summer music festival in Verbier, Switzerland, from 1999 through 2006. It was Levine's first long-term commitment to a student orchestra since becoming music director at the Met.
After becoming music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Levine also served as music director of the Tanglewood Music Center, the BSO's acclaimed summer academy at Tanglewood for student instrumentalists, singers, composers, and conductors. There he conducted the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, directed fully staged opera performances with student singers, and gave master classes for singers and conductors.
Levine said in an interview:
At my age, you are naturally inclined towards teaching. You want to teach what you have learned to the next generation so that they don't have to spend time reinventing the wheel. I was lucky that I met the right mentors and teachers at the right moment. I love working with young musicians and singers, and those at the Tanglewood Music Center are unequivocally some of the finest and most talented in the world.

He continued to work with young students even when his health issues kept him from conducting. He was awarded the Lotus Award from Young Concert Artists. Anthony Tommasini wrote in The New York Times in 2016: "The aspiring singers in the Met's young artist development program, one of many important ventures Mr. Levine started, must understand how lucky they are to have, as a teacher and mentor, a musician who even in his 20s worked at the Met with giants like Jon Vickers and Renata Tebaldi."

Health problems

Levine has experienced recurrent health issues since 2006, including sciatica and what he has called "intermittent tremors". On March 1, 2006, Levine tripped and fell onstage during a standing ovation after a performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and tore the rotator cuff in his right shoulder, leaving the remaining subscription concerts in Boston to his assistant conductor at the time. Later that month, Levine underwent surgery to repair the injury. He returned to the podium on July 7, 2006.
Levine withdrew from the majority of the Tanglewood 2008 summer season, because of surgery required to remove a kidney with a malignant cyst. He returned to the podium in Boston on September 24, 2008, at Symphony Hall.
On September 29, 2009, it was announced that Levine would undergo emergency back surgery for a herniated disk. He missed three weeks of engagements.
In March 2010, the BSO announced that Levine would miss the remainder of the Boston Symphony season because of back pain. The Met also announced, on April 4, 2010, that Levine was withdrawing from the remainder of his scheduled performances for the season. According to the Met, Levine was required to have "corrective surgery for an ongoing lower back problem". Levine returned to conducting duties at the Met and the BSO at the beginning of the 2010/11 season, but in February 2011 he cancelled his Boston engagements for the rest of the season.
In the summer of 2011, Levine underwent further surgery on his back. In September 2011, after he fell down a flight of stairs, fractured his spine, and injured his back while on vacation in Vermont, the Met announced that Levine would not conduct at the Met at least for the rest of 2011.
After two years of surgery and physical therapy, Levine returned to conducting for the first time on May 19, 2013, in a concert with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Levine conducted from a motorized wheelchair, with a special platform designed to accommodate the wheelchair, which could rise and descend like an elevator. Levine finally returned to the Met on September 24, 2013. The same type of platform was present in the Met orchestra pit for his September 2013 return performance.
For many years, both Levine and the Met denied as unfounded the rumors that Levine had Parkinson's disease. As New York magazine reported: "The conductor states flatly that the condition is not Parkinson's disease, as people had speculated in 'that silly Times piece.'" However, in 2016 both he and the Met finally admitted that the rumors were true, and that Levine had in fact had the disease since 1994. The Washington Post noted: "It wasn't just the illnesses, but the constant alternation between concealment and an excess of revelation that kept so much attention focused on them and away from the music."

Sexual assault allegations

Four men have accused Levine of sexually molesting them, from the 1960s to the 1990s.
On December 2, 2017, it was revealed publicly that a police report—dating from October 2016—detailed that Levine had allegedly sexually molested a male teenager for years. The alleged sexual abuse began while Levine was guest conductor at the Ravinia Festival, outside Chicago, where Levine was music director for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's summer residencies from 1973 to 1993.
One accuser said that in the summer of 1968 when he was a 17-year-old high school student, and attending Meadow Brook School of Music in Michigan, Levine masturbated the teenager, and then pressured him to masturbate Levine. When he next saw Levine, the accuser told him that he would not repeat the sexual behavior, but asked if they could continue to make music as they had before; Levine said no. The accuser later played bass in the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra for decades, and became a professor.
A second accuser said that that same summer, Levine told him to take his clothing off and also masturbated him, when he was 17 years old and a cello student, and that Levine then initiated with the teenager a number of sexual encounters that have since haunted him. He said that the following year, in Cleveland where Levine was at the time an assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, Levine on several occasions directed him and other members of a group of teenage musicians who studied together to put on blindfolds and masturbate members of the group that they could not see, which they did.
A third accuser, a violinist and pianist who grew up in Illinois near the Ravinia Music Festival which Levine led as its music director from 1971 to 1993, said that he was sexually abused by Levine beginning when the accuser was 16 years old in the summer of 1986. He said that Levine would have him meet him in Illinois and New York City, and would ask him to take off his clothing, fondle and kiss his penis, and masturbate in front of him. He had previously detailed his accusation in 2016 in a report to the Lake Forest Police Department in Illinois. On December 8, the department announced that Levine could not be charged criminally in Illinois because the accuser was 16 years old at the time, and while today a 16-year-old is not considered old enough to consent to such conduct in Illinois, at the time that was the statutory age of consent. The department noted: "we are bound to apply the law that was in effect at the time the allegations occurred rather than the law as it currently exists."
On December 4, a fourth male, who later had a long career as a violinist in the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, said he had been abused by Levine beginning in 1968, when he was 20 years old and attending the Meadow Brook School of Music. Levine was a teacher in the summer program. The accuser said that when he went to Levine's dorm room to discuss problems the student was having with his bow arm, Levine said: "If we're going to work on your violin I have to understand you sexually", and then exposed himself and masturbated.

Reactions

The New York Times said that the Met had known of at least one sexual abuse allegation as early as 1979, but dismissed it as baseless. Furthermore, the Met had been aware of both the third accuser's abuse allegations since they were made in the 2016 police report, and of the attendant police investigation. But the Met did not suspend Levine or launch an investigation of its own until over a year later, in December 2017.
In response to the December 2017 news article, the Metropolitan Opera announced that it would investigate Levine with regard to the sexual abuse allegations that date back to the 1980s that were set forth in the 2016 police report. On December 3, after two additional males came forward with allegations of abuse, the Met suspended its ties with Levine, and canceled all upcoming engagements with him. A fourth accuser came forward the following day.
For its part, the Ravinia Festival, six months after the criminal investigation of Levine began, created an honorific title for Levine—"Conductor Laureate"—and signed him to a five-year renewable contract beginning in 2018. On December 4, 2017, the Ravinia Festival severed all ties with Levine, and terminated his five-year contract to lead the Chicago Symphony there.
The Boston Symphony Orchestra said Levine "will never be employed or contracted by the BSO at any time in the future". The Juilliard School, where Levine had studied, replaced him in a February 2018 performance where he was scheduled to lead the Juilliard Orchestra and singers from the Met's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. On December 5, the Cincinnati May Festival canceled Levine's appearance in May. On December 7, in New Plymouth, New Zealand, the cinema chain Event Cinemas abruptly cancelled the screening of a Met production of Levine conducting Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. On December 8, Fred Child, host of the classical music radio show Performance Today, wrote that Levine: "is accused of inflicting grievous harm to living members of our musical community. Out of respect for these people and their wounds, I choose not to broadcast performances featuring Mr. Levine on the podium."
Classical music blogger, former Village Voice music critic, and Juilliard School faculty member Greg Sandow said he had been contacted by three men over the years who said that they had been abused by Levine, and that reports of sexual abuse by Levine were "widely talked about" for 40 years. Sandow said further: "Everybody in the classical music business at least since the 1980s has talked about Levine as a sex abuser. The investigation should have been done decades ago." Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Justin Davidson mused on the culture website of New York magazine that: "James Levine's career has clearly ended", and "I'm not sure the Met can survive Levine's disgrace." Similarly, drama critic Terry Teachout of The Wall Street Journal wrote an article entitled: "The Levine Cataclysm; How allegations against James Levine of sexual misconduct with teenagers could topple the entire Metropolitan Opera". The Washington Post music critic Anne Midgette noted: "The Met has known about these allegations for at least a year, and are only investigating them now that they are public", and opined on her Facebook page that the Met has "quite probably spent years protecting its star conductor from just this kind of allegation". Music critic Tim Pfaff of the LGBT Bay Area Reporter wrote that The New York Times chief classical music critic Anthony Tommasini had the "weirdest" reaction, "lamenting the ugliness of it all under a... headline, 'Should I Put Away My James Levine Recordings?' His conclusion was that he and his husband... should move those recordings from their living room."
The musicians in the Met orchestra applauded the courage of the four men who came forward with accusations that Levine had abused them. Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, which represents the Met's orchestra as well as Levine, said, "We are horrified and sickened by the recently reported allegations of sexual abuse by Mr. Levine."
Five days after news of the accusations by the four men broke, Levine spoke about them for the first time, and called them "unfounded". The accusers stand by their claims, with one saying: "I will take a lie-detector test. Will he?" Six days later, music critic Arthur Kaptainis wrote in the Montreal Gazette that Levine's denial "had little effect".
On December 21, 2017, four women accused Royal Philharmonic conductor Charles Dutoit of sexual assault, saying that they felt comfortable speaking up after Levine was suspended after allegations against him were made public.
On March 12, 2018, the Met announced that it had fired Levine. Its investigation found Levine had "engaged in sexually abusive and harassing conduct towards vulnerable artists in the early stages of their careers".
Levine sued the Metropolitan Opera in New York State Supreme Court for breach of contract and defamation on March 15, 2018, three days after the company fired him, seeking more than $5.8 million in damages. The Met denied Levine's allegations. A year later, a New York State Supreme Court judge dismissed most of Levine's claims, but did rule that the Met and its attorney had made defamatory statements.
The Metropolitan Opera and Levine announced a settlement on undisclosed terms in August 2019.

Recordings and film

Levine made many audio and video recordings. He has recorded extensively with many orchestras, and especially often with the Metropolitan Opera. His performance of Aida with Leontyne Price, her last in opera, was preserved on video and may be seen at the Met's own online archive of performances. Of particular note are his performances of Wagner's complete Der Ring des Nibelungen. A studio recording made for Deutsche Grammophon from 1987 to 1989 is on compact disc, and a 1989 live performance of the Ring is available on DVD. He also appears on several dozen albums as a pianist, collaborating with such singers as Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle, Christa Ludwig, and Dawn Upshaw, as well as performing the chamber music of Franz Schubert and Francis Poulenc, among others.
Levine was featured in the animated Disney film Fantasia 2000. He conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the soundtrack recordings of all the music in the film. Levine is also seen in the film talking briefly with Mickey Mouse, just as his predecessor Leopold Stokowski did in the original film.

Discography

Among the awards listed in his Met biography are:
In addition, his biography says Levine has received honorary doctorates from the University of Cincinnati, the New England Conservatory of Music, Northwestern University, the State University of New York, and the Juilliard School.