Archives for March 2021

NEW YORK (AP) — Conductor James Levine, who ruled over the Metropolitan Opera for more than four decades before being eased aside when his health declined and then was fired for sexual improprieties, has died. He was 77.

Levine died March 9 in Palm Springs, California, of natural causes, his physician of 17 years, Dr. Len Horovitz, said Wednesday.

Levine made his Met debut in 1971 and became one of the signature artists in the company’s century-plus history, conducting 2,552 performances and ruling over its repertoire, orchestra and singers as music or artistic director from 1976 until forced out by general manager Peter Gelb in 2016 due to Parkinson’s disease.

Levine became music director emeritus and remained head of its young artists program but was suspended on Dec. 3, 2017, the day after conducting a Verdi “Requiem” in what turned out to be his final performance, after accounts in the New York Post and The New York Times of sexual misconduct dating to the 1960s.

He was fired the following March 12 and never conducted again. He had been scheduled to make comeback performances of Brahms’ ”Ein Deutsches Requiem” this Jan. 17 and 21 in Florence, Italy, but the concerts were canceled due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

“No artist in the 137 year history of the Met had as profound an impact as James Levine,” Gelb said in a statement. “He raised the Met’s musical standards to new and greater heights.”

Known for bushy hair an an ever-present towel draped over a shoulder during rehearsals, Levine greatly expanded the Met’s repertory and was especially praised for his performances of Wagner, Verdi and Berg. He was closely associated with Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and Birgit Nilsson, who spoke on stage at close to 2 a.m. near the end of Levine’s 25th anniversary concert, which stretched on for about eight hours at the Met in 1996.

Levine was beloved by singers for forcing orchestras to bend to their needs.

“Confidence is a tremendous part of an artist’s performance, especially singers, because a singer cannot evaluate what’s happening,” he told The Associated Press in 1996. “It’s in her body. It’s not out here where the piano keys are, or where the cello is. To me, singers are heroic in that respect.”

He became on dominant figure in the media age, making hundreds of audio and video recordings that have been released commercially or distributed by the Met and its media partners.

But outrage ensued when the Met in court documents said it found credible evidence that he engaged in sexually abusive or harassing conduct with several people that included inappropriate touching and demands for sex acts over a 25-year period. The Met said it found evidence of conduct that included discussion of pornography, groping, kissing and mutual masturbation.

In one instance, the Met accused Levine of inappropriately touching a musician starting in 1979 and six more times until 1991. In another 1985 incident, Levine was accused of groping and kissing an opera singer he was giving a ride home in his car against that person’s will. In 1986, Levine sexually abused a 16-year-old and arranged an estimated $50,000 in payments to the person through his brother, the filings stated.

The conductor’s lawyers said at the time that Levine “did not commit any acts of sexual misconduct against any individuals, much less the unnamed individuals.”

In addition to his lengthy tenure at the Met, Levine was music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Ravinia Festival from 1973-93, the Munich Philharmonic from 1999-2004 and the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 2004-11. He conducted at the Richard Wagner Festival from 1982-98, including a new production of “Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung)” in 1994. He was a regular with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic.

Levine was regarded as the top American conductor following the death of Leonard Bernstein in 1990. He won 10 Grammy Awards and was nominated for 37.

Born June 23, 1943, in Cincinnati, the grandson of a cantor and the son of bandleader Lawrence Levine and Broadway actress Helen Goldstein, Levine began taking piano lessons at 4 and made his professional debut with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra at 10 in Mendelssohn’s” Piano Concerto No. 2.”

That same year, he began piano lessons with Walter Levin, the principal violinist of the LaSalle Quartet. By 18, Levine became the first piano-conducting double major ever at the Juilliard School in New York City.

He studied piano with Rudolph Serkin at the Marlboro Festival and with Rosina Lhevinne at Juilliard, spending 13 summers at the Aspen Festival in Colorado. After three years at Juilliard, he reached the postgraduate level, then dropped out to become an apprentice to George Szell at the Cleveland Orchestra, where he spent six years.

Levine made his Met debut in “Tosca” with Grace Bumbry and Franco Corelli on June 5, 1971. The following February, he became principal conductor for the Met’s 1973-74 season, assisting music director Rafael Kubelik, and became music director with the 1976-77 season. By the 1986-87 season, he was promoted to artistic director — in near-total control of the repertoire and casting — and drew criticism as other major conductors stayed away.

He led upward of 110 performances in a season in the 1980s, including tours. Levine was downgraded to music director when he joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2004.

Levine was known for restoring cuts in operas that had long been shortened. He favored a central core of Verdi, Wagner, Puccini, Mozart and Strauss, such as Mozart’s “Idomeneo” and “”La Clemenza di Tito,” and Verdi’s “I Vespri Siciliani.”

“If you do the `Ring’ and it has flaws, it’s such a complex undertaking that there can be a lot of good things it,” he said. “But you cannot do a bel canto opera with a weakness in the cast. Because there’s nothing there except that… It would be a waste of everybody’s time.”

Levine also pushed and led the Met premiere of the Gershwins’ “Porgy and Bess.” He was criticized for a lack of contemporary music — he said the Met was such a large institution that commissions came only slowly — and as a symphony conductor he championed composers Elliot Carter, John Corigliano and Charles Wuorinen.

While he upgraded the quality of the orchestra to the highest level since the company began in 1883, his health became an issue for more than a decade.

Levine started conducting from a chair in late 2001, and when tremors in his left arm and leg became noticeable in 2004, he said they began a decade earlier. His health worsened in 2006, when he tripped and fell on the stage of Boston’s Symphony Hall during ovations that followed a performance and he tore a rotator cuff, which required shoulder surgery.

He had an operation in 2008 to remove a kidney and another in 2009 to repair a herniated disk in his back. He then suffered spinal stenosis, leading to surgeries in May and July 2011. He had another operation that September after falling and damaging a vertebra, an injury that sidelined him until May 2013, when he returned and conducted from a motorized wheelchair that he would use for the remainder of his career.

With Levine shifting to emeritus, Yannick Nezet-Seguin was hired in June 2016 to succeed him as music director starting in 2020-21, a timetable eventually moved up by two seasons.

After the allegations of sexual improprieties became public, the Met hired former U.S. Attorney Robert J. Cleary of Proskauer Rose to head its investigation, and the company said more than 70 people were interviewed.

“The investigation uncovered credible evidence that Mr. Levine had engaged in sexually abusive and harassing conduct both before and during the period when he worked at the Met,” the company said in a statement. “The investigation also uncovered credible evidence that Mr. Levine engaged in sexually abusive and harassing conduct towards vulnerable artists in the early stages of their careers, over whom Mr. Levine had authority. In light of these findings, the Met concludes that it would be inappropriate and impossible for Mr. Levine to continue to work at the Met.”

Levine sued the Met for breach of contract and defamation, seeking at least $5.8 million in damages. New York Supreme Court Justice Andrea Masley dismissed all but one of the defamation claims and the suit was settled in 2019.

His brother Tom, an artist who was his longtime aide, died in April 2020 at age 71 of leukemia.

Levine is survived by wife Suzanne Thomson, his longtime companion whom he married last year, according to Andrea Anson of his agency; sister Janet Levine and her husband Kenneth Irwin.

Donations in his memory may be made to The James L. Levine Charitable Foundation, P.O. Box 3542, New York, NY 10008.

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Pushing forward with its plan to reopen schools this spring, the Biden administration is expanding coronavirus testing for teachers, staff and students and convening a summit for educators to share “best practices” for returning kids to the classroom.

“The time is now, and schools must act immediately to get students safely back into school buildings,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said Wednesday.

President Joe Biden, who was inaugurated on Jan. 20, has pledged to have most elementary and middle schools open to instruction by the end of his first 100 days in office. The administration has been promoting the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill recently passed by Congress as a way to accomplish that. As part of that effort, first lady Jill Biden visited a school in New Hampshire on Wednesday.

The states will share $122 billion for K-12 schools, with allocations ranging from $285 million for Vermont schools to $15 billion for California, according to the Education Department.

The money can be used to reduce class sizes and modify classrooms to enhance social distancing, install ventilation systems and purchase personal protective equipment. It also can pay for more nurses, counselors and janitors, and summer school.

Also Wednesday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced $10 billion for states to support school COVID-19 testing programs.

Most public schools haven’t been able to afford the robust testing seen as critical to reopening safely, said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.

“With this investment, help truly is on the way to aid school systems in implementing a testing system that will help keep students, educators and staff safe inside school buildings,” she said in a statement.

Cardona said a summit scheduled for next Wednesday will give education leaders, teachers and students an opportunity to share their experiences in reopening schools. The Education Department said first lady Jill Biden will deliver opening remarks. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also will speak.

“We are holding this summit with the goal of sharing best practices and connecting leaders, educators and students from across this country who are navigating this challenge together and finding creative solutions to support our students and bring them back to in-person learning,” Cardona said.

Jill Biden promoted the relief bill and highlighted reopening strategies during a visit to the Christa McAuliffe School in Concord, New Hampshire, attended by one of the Biden grandchildren. The first lady watched a student perform a series of exercises meant to improve emotional well-being and she chatted with students about distance learning.

“I think it’s really hard to learn on Zoom. Don’t you? I think it’s really hard,” she said.

On a call with reporters, Cardona said he expects schools will fully open in the fall if vaccinations continue as expected, and with guidance from health authorities.

“What does normal look like? I wish I had a crystal ball. We don’t know,” he said. “What we do know is that this spring we’re wanting to see schools reopen using the mitigation strategies and giving students an opportunity for that in-person learning.”

School leaders see the flow of new money as a major factor, along with vaccines for teachers, in getting schools open and keeping them open, said Dan Domenech, executive director of a school administrators’ group.

The Education Department will begin making the money available this month.

“There are a lot of districts that were desperately hoping that this would happen to prevent them from going into bankruptcy at the end of the year, which school districts are not allowed to do. They have had to borrow in order to supplement their budgets with dollars that they did not have,” Domenech said.

Schools need money to fill holes blown in their budgets by unanticipated expenses such as the laptops and internet hot spots purchased for remote students, and ventilation systems, PPE and cleaning and distancing protocols for students who have returned to classrooms.

Next come the expenses to get students back on track academically. That could mean paying teachers and other staff to keep school going through the summer or continuing remote learning to supplement school days.

Chicago Public Schools, the nation’s third largest district, has conservatively estimated a $300 million hit in the budget being written now.

The roughly $1.8 billion anticipated from the federal aid package will cover that and allow for new investments in lost learning and students’ emotional needs, the district said last week.

President Biden has ordered states to prioritize teachers in their vaccination plans, and the CDC has released guidelines to help schools reopen. But one of those guidelines — that students be seated 6 feet (1.8 meters) apart — is already being reevaluated because of the challenges of achieving that.

During a congressional hearing Wednesday, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said the agency is reviewing studies on physical distancing in schools and will update its guidance when it has “concise and consistent evidence.”

She that studies looking at distancing of 3 feet in schools got under way after it became clear that distancing of 6 feet would be difficult.

“Whenever there are challenges, that’s when science emerges,” she said.

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Associated Press writer Candice Choi in New York contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2021 . All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.