JAMES LEVINE
James Levine conducts four operas at the Metropolitan Opera in 2009–2010, his 39th season there, including opening night’s Tosca premiere (the work with which he made his Met debut in 1971), the new production of Les Contes d’Hoffmann, and revivals of Simon Boccanegra and Lulu. He and the MET Orchestra are heard in two concerts at Carnegie Hall this season (the soloists are Stephanie Blythe and Diana Damrau), while Pierre Boulez conducts the third date in the subscription series (with Deborah Polaski in May); Levine and the MET Chamber Ensemble give two performances in Weill and Zankel halls, featuring the music of Boulez, Mozart, Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, and Strauss. (Also in Zankel Hall, he participates in a series of master classes for the Marilyn Horne Foundation next month.)
Maestro Levine leads the Boston Symphony in two programs at Carnegie Hall in coming months with soloists Pierre-Laurent Aimard (in music of Ravel and Carter) and Christine Brewer, Stephanie Blythe, Aleksandrs Antonenko, Shenyang, and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus (in Mendelssohn’s Elijah). His sixth season as Music Director of the BSO began on September 23 and includes world premieres of commissions from Peter Lieberson, John Harbison, and JohnWilliams; the US premiere of Carter’s Flute Concerto; his first performances with the BSO of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony; and a special Pension Fund concert in February that features music of “all four Strausses”: waltzes and polkas of Johann Sr., Jr., and Josef, as well as Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote. The BSO recently released the first five in a new series of recordings made in live performances in Symphony Hall, includingMahler’s Sixth Symphony, Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé,William Bolcom’s Eighth Symphony and “Lyric Concerto,” Brahms’s German Requiem, and a two-CD collection of Mozart symphonies.
James Levine makes his debut in March with the Staatskapelle Berlin and Mahler’s Third Symphony in the German capital (as well as a gala four-hand piano evening with that orchestra’s Artistic Director, Daniel Barenboim, and Dorothea Röschmann, Waltraud Meier, Matthew Polenzani, and René Pape, for the benefit of the Deutsche Staatsoper’s imminent renovation), and will help celebrate Cincinnati Opera’s 90th Anniversary in June, leading a new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in his hometown before returning to the BSO’s Tanglewood Festival (July 9–August 4).
THE MET ORCHESTRA
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra is regarded as one of the world’s finest orchestras. From the time of the company’s inception in 1883, the ensemble has worked with leading conductors in both opera and concert performances and has developed into an orchestra of enormous technical polish and style.
The MET Orchestra maintains a demanding schedule of performances and rehearsals during its 32-week New York season, when the company performs seven times a week in repertory that normally encompasses approximately 27 operas.
Arturo Toscanini conducted almost 500 performances at the Met, and Gustav Mahler, during the few years he was in New York, conducted 54 Met performances. More recently, many of the world’s great conductors have led the orchestra: Walter, Beecham, Reiner, Mitropoulos, Kempe, Szell, Böhm, Solti, Maazel, Bernstein, Mehta, Abbado, Karajan, Dohnányi, Haitink, Tennstedt, Ozawa, Gergiev, and Barenboim. Carlos Kleiber’s only US opera performances were with the MET Orchestra.
In addition to its opera schedule, the orchestra has a distinguished history of concert performances. Toscanini made his American debut as a symphonic conductor with the MET Orchestra in 1913, and the impressive list of instrumental soloists who appeared with the orchestra includes Leopold Godowsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Arthur Rubinstein, Pablo Casals, Josef Hofmann, Ferruccio Busoni, Jascha Heifetz, Moritz Rosenthal, and Fritz Kreisler. Since the orchestra resumed symphonic concerts in 1991, instrumental soloists have included Itzhak Perlman, Maxim Vengerov, Alfred Brendel, and Evgeny Kissin, and the group has performed four world premieres: Babbitt’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (1998), Bolcom’s Symphony No. 7 (2002), Shen’s Legend (2002), and Wuorinen’s Theologoumenon (2007).
The orchestra’s high standing led to its first commercial recordings in nearly 20 years: Wagner’s complete Ring cycle, conducted by James Levine. Recorded by Deutsche Grammophon over a period of three years, Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, and Götterdämmerung were winners of an unprecedented three consecutive Grammy Awards in 1989, 1990, and 1991 for Best Opera Recording. Other recordings under Maestro Levine include L’elisir d’amore, Idomeneo, Le nozze di Figaro, Der fliegende Holländer, Parsifal, Erwartung, Manon Lescaut, and seven Verdi operas. Maestro Levine has also led the orchestra for recordings of Wagner overtures, Verdi ballet music, an all-Berg disc with Renée Fleming, and aria albums with Bryn Terfel, Kathleen Battle, and Ms. Fleming. The orchestra’s first symphonic recordings are pairings of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition with Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps; Beethoven’s “Eroica” with Schubert’s “Unfinished” symphonies; and Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote and Tod und Verklärung.
In spring 1991 the orchestra, under the leadership of Maestro Levine, began concert touring. They have since traveled across the US and to Europe (including their debut at the Salzburg Festival in 2002), as well as annually to Carnegie Hall. In spring 2006 the company returned to Japan for its fifth tour there in 18 years.
More Info