James Levine is the most powerful opera conductor in America
Oh! to be a conductor, to weld a hundred men into one singing giant, to build up the most gorgeous arabesques of sound, to wave a hand and make the clamoring strings sink to a mutter, to wave again, and hear the brass crashing out in triumph, to throw up a finger, then another and another, and to know that with every one the orchestra would bound forward into a still more ecstatic surge and sweep, to fling oneself forward, and for a moment or so keep everything still, frozen, in the hollow of one's hand, and then to set them all singing and soaring in one final sweep, with the cymbals clashing at every flicker of one's eyelid, to sound the grand Amen.
—J.B. Priestley
The burly figure standing calmly on the podium of a darkened opera house pit bears little resemblance to the conventionally glamorous image of a famous conductor. At 205 Ibs. and standing less than 5 ft. 10 in., he is built more like a stagehand than an aristocratic maestro, and his round face, capped by a corona of curly hair, is a world away from the suave image of a Leonard Bernstein. Yet as his baton comes slashing down with swift, chopping strokes, he is abruptly transformed into a figure of grace. Cuing the orchestra, effortlessly guiding singers through an opera's trickiest passages, joyfully but inaudibly singing along, he has become Priestley's ideal personified. And why not? James Levine, 39, is doing what he was born to do.
Not since Bernstein has an American-born, American-trained conductor had such an astonishing career. As music director and principal conductor of New York City's Metropolitan Opera, one of the world's top opera companies, Levine wields an international influence. During the summers, when he is not working at the Met, he leads the Chicago Symphony as music director of the Ravinia Festival. He is in demand as a guest conductor, and such is his reputation that whenever a major vacancy in the conductorial ranks occurs, Levine's name (it rhymes with divine) is invariably mentioned as a possible successor. A talented pianist, he often finds time to squeeze a chamber concert or two between conducting appearances.
Nor is his activity limited to America. Since 1975, Levine has appeared regularly at the prestigious Salzburg Festival in Austria, leading widely acclaimed productions of Mozart's The Magic Flute and La Clemenza di Tito in the composer's home town. When Wolfgang Wagner, grandson of Richard, was seeking a conductor for last summer's centennial production of Parsifal at Bayreuth, Levine was his choice. "Jimmy's star is going up," says a member of the Chicago Symphony. "I don't think anything will interrupt the rise." Levine talks about his ascent to prominence with a characteristic mixture of pride and hyperbole. "Every year my life gets better," he says. "It's all sort of like a dream. It's so nice."
The dream, however, is no fantasy. Observes Soprano Renata Scotto, who frequently works with Levine at the Met: "The rapport he establishes is so wonderful, it is really a joy to make music with him." When Bernstein heard Levine lead his first Parsifal at the Met, in 1979, he broke into tears. "It was the best Parsifal I ever heard," he recalls.