maestro levine
Serial amuser
Disgraced former Met music director James Levinewas sighted at yesterday’s matinee performance of New York City Opera’s Brokeback Mountain.
Suit yourself
La Cieca just received a package of pdf files the sender says is a copy of James Levine‘s lawsuit against the Met.
“But what about black heel marks?”
James Levine is both a floor wax and a dessert topping!
Annalepsis
James Levine has quietly been slotted into the spring reprise of the Met’s new Tosca.
And in the ‘how’
Our selected Rosenkavalier video overview closes out the 20th-century selections, crosses the millennial mark, and includes the first of our performances to depart from the opera’s prescribed 18th-century setting.
Levine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
“How many years can you ask your subscribers to see the same production?”
Climbing Up the Ass II: The Climbening
Incoming Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin lavishes praise on former Met Music Director James Levine for actually doing his job, for once.
Period piece
Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s production of L’Italiana in Algeri for the Met remains steadfastly ignorant of postcolonial theory.
Je ne suis pas précis ici
If you’ve been following the coverage of the Nézet-Séguin succession, you will note that a good deal of the coverage centers on whether the incoming maestro will “champion” this composer or that.
Just a song at twilight
“Mr. Levine was conducting his beloved Wagner for what was almost certainly the last time.”
Trauermarsch
I can scarcely remember a performance where so many conflicting thoughts raced through my mind as happened Thursday night during the Met Orchestra’s “bleeding chunks” of Wagner’s Ring at Carnegie Hall.
Cold Turkey
The no-star, slapstick revival of John Dexter’s 37-year-old production of Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail that opened Friday night proved James Levine’s tenure as Music Director of the Met will end in two weeks with neither a whimper nor a bang.
“Das Ende! Das Ende!
“Maestro James Levine, the Met’s Music Director since 1976, announced that after 40 years in the position, he will retire at the end of the current season, for health reasons,” says the Met press office.
Not only with words, but with lively gestures
“I will never sing the role again. It was frightful. We were a set of madwomen…There is nothing beyond Elektra. We have lived and reached the furthest boundaries in dramatic writing for the voice with Wagner. But Richard Strauss goes beyond him. His singing voices are lost. We have come to a full stop.”
Doge days
That Placido Domingo and James Levine, the Met’s inexorable septuagenarians, would team up yet again—on April Fools’ Day, no less—for a revival of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra occasioned an uncomfortable degree of doubt and dread.
The Metropolitan Opera’s 2016-2017 season!
The Met’s 2016-2017 season opens on September 26 with a new production of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle.
The end is in the beginning and yet you go on
“…they hoped he would soon take on an emeritus position that would keep him involved in the company as part of a graceful exit.:
Well, you see, grandma was playing up on the roof…
“James Levine, the longtime Metropolitan Opera music director whose health struggles recently brought him to the verge of retirement from that position, has canceled a series of concerts with the Philadelphia Orchestra next week.”
Not nobody, not nohow!
“Mr. Luisi won praise replacing Mr. Levine time after time, particularly in a costly version of Wagner’s Ring cycle—though, perhaps in a sign of the situation’s delicacy, the two conductors have never met in person.”
The double negative has led to proof positive
La Cieca thinks she knows who the murderer is.
The toothless tiger rules the restless jungle
It’s up to you, cher public, to try to decide for yourself what, if anything, this bizarre story in the New York Times means.
Eminence grise
Even when he’s not conducting the production, or, for that matter, even after the production is closed, Maestro Levine remains a presence on the Met’s website.
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
