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In private life, Levine keeps a low profile. As with many prominent unmarried musicians, Levine gathers rumors the way his formal attire gathers lint. He is whispered to have had liaisons with people of every age and hue, with both sopranos and tenors. But it is his longtime companion, Thomson, a pale, pretty brunet, who lives with him in his unprepossessing apartment and at their 41-acre farm in upstate New York, managing the household. He unwinds with his fruit juice, diet soda and candy bars, and can get by on as little as four hours' sleep, content, as always, to study another score.
The money he earns, estimated to be in the high six figures annually, is spent on creature comforts, such as good meals and his blue Cadillac Seville, which he joyfully pilots around Manhattan's pot-holed streets with the aplomb of a captain at the helm of a swift cutter. But he is also generous with his Met colleagues, sending them champagne on festive occasions and often giving a party at the Renaissance Center in Detroit to celebrate the company's yearly U.S. spring tour.
Levine spends little on clothes or on polishing his public image. When his father once advised him to lose weight, get a haircut and trade in his glasses for contact lenses, Levine balked: "I said I will make myself so much the opposite of the great profile that I will have the satisfaction of knowing that I'm engaged because I'm a musician, and not because the ladies are swooning in the first balcony."
How long Levine will remain at the Met is moot. While he never criticizes Bliss, it is clear that he wants more control. In renegotiating his contract, which expires in 1986, Levine is demanding complete artistic authority over the Met, including a lump-sum budget to spend as he sees fit. "For me," says Levine, "it would mean that any mistake that happens then would happen because I had lousy judgment, instead of a mistake happening because we couldn't time the moves right." Other organizations, among them the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Royal Opera House, approach him with offers. But for now the Met comes first.
No one should be surprised, however, if Levine's career eventually becomes fully international, with major positions on both sides of the Atlantic. As he took his curtain calls after his final Bayreuth performance last summer, that highly critical, frequently rather parochial audience gave him a loud, long ovation. His face flushed with excitement, his eyes gleaming, Levine came onstage slowly, basking in the bravos. Shyly bowing from the waist, his hands resting on his thighs, his head bobbing up and down in mute response, he seemed more the precocious pupil being celebrated by his schoolmates than the architect of an international musical triumph.
Afterward the orchestra musicians presented him with an ornate scroll with all their signatures as a gesture of respect and affection. "Heavenly thanks for the good musical collaboration," it reads. "So nice," said the kid from Cincinnati who had grown up to sound the grand Amen. "That's marvelous. Fantastic. Wonderful."
—By Michael Walsh. Reported by Barry Hillenbrand/New York