James Levine, Metropolitan Opera music director for 40 years, to retire.
Conductor James Levine is citing ill health as his reason for stepping down as music director at New York's Metropolitan Opera.
In the coming months, the Met intends to appoint a new music director, one of classical music's most prestigious positions and a key figure at the largest performing arts organization in the United States. He will also continue to oversee the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, which nurtures emerging singers.
The Met said Levine had in recent years "struggled with the effects of Parkinson's disease, making it increasingly hard for him to conduct a full schedule of Met performances."
"Through 45 years of unwavering devotion, maestro Levine has shaped the Met Orchestra into the world-class ensemble it is today", clarinetist Jessica Phillips, chair of the orchestra committee, said in a statement. Levine, 72, has led 2,551 performances of more than 85 operas with the Met, by far the most by an individual in the company's history. He made his debut there conducting "Tosca" in 1971.
His final performance of the current season will be on May 26 in Carnegie Hall, where he will lead the Met Orchestra in excerpts from Wagner's "Ring" cycle: music he has championed, perhaps more than any other American conductor, over the long arc of his immensely distinguished career.
A successor will be announced in "a couple of months." He then suffered spinal stenosis, leading to surgeries in May and July 2011, and he had another operation that September after falling and damaging a vertebra, an injury that sidelined him until May 2013. He is withdrawing from next year's new staging of Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier but remains slated for revivals of Rossini's L'Italiana in Algeri, Verdi's Nabucco and Mozart's Idomeneo.
At: http://farandulife.com/2016/04/james-levine-metropolitan-opera-music-director-for-40-years/
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