James Levine’s Final Act at the Met Ends in Disgrace

[+ WilliamM]

1. Excerpt from Full New York Times article. Note highlighted paragraph by me.
   

 

Photo

A curtain call after Wagner’s “Das Rheingold” in 2010

 

Mr. Levine, 74, has become the highest-profile figure in classical music to have his career upended during the national reckoning over sexual misconduct. It was an extraordinary fall from grace for a legendary maestro, a man many have considered the greatest American conductor since Leonard Bernstein.

He made the Met’s orchestra into one of the finest in the world, led the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Munich Philharmonic and gained worldwide renown through recordings, telecasts and videos. His fame transcended classical music: He shared the screen with Mickey Mouse in Disney’s “Fantasia 2000,” and made the cover of Time magazine in 1983, under a headline proclaiming him “America’s Top Maestro.”

 

 

 

 

The Met suspended Mr. Levine and opened its investigation in December after The Times reported on-the-record accusations of four men who said that Mr. Levine had sexually abused them decades ago, when they were teenagers or his students. Mr. Levine called the accusations “unfounded,” saying in a statement that “I have not lived my life as an oppressor or an aggressor.”

 

Photo

Bows after Saint-Saëns’s “Samson et Dalila” in 1998,

 

But some questions arose early on about how the company had handled the case, including the fact that it began its investigation more than a year after Peter Gelb, its general manager, was first told that the police in Illinois were investigating an accusation that Mr. Levine had sexually abused a teenage boy there in the 1980s.

 

Mr. Gelb has said he briefed the leadership of the Met’s board about the police investigation and spoke with Mr. Levine, who denied the accusations. But Mr. Gelb said that the company took no further action, waiting to see what the police found.

 

The Met said that its investigation, which was led by Robert J. Cleary, a partner at the Proskauer Rose law firm who was previously a United States attorney in New Jersey and Illinois, had determined that “any claims or rumors that members of the Met’s management or its board of directors engaged in a cover-up of information relating to these issues are completely unsubstantiated.”

 

The accusations against Mr. Levine reported in The Times went back decades, and shared marked similarities.

 

Chris Brown said that Mr. Levine had abused him in the summer of 1968, when he was a 17-year-old student at the Meadow Brook School of Music in Michigan and Mr. Levine led the school’s orchestral institute. Mr. Brown, who went on to play principal bass in the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, said that one night in the dorms, Mr. Levine had masturbated him and asked him to reciprocate — and then punished Mr. Brown when he declined to do so again, ignoring him for the rest of the summer, even when he was conducting him.

 

Photo

Mr. Levine, right, in 1997, with Schuyler Chapin, a former Met general manager who was New York’s cultural affairs commissioner under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Credit Bill Cunningham/The New York Times

 

James Lestock, a cellist, said that he, too, was abused that summer when he was a student, and said that the abuse continued in Cleveland, where a tight-knit clique of musicians followed Mr. Levine, who was then an assistant conductor at the Cleveland Orchestra on the cusp of a major career. He said that at one point Mr. Levine had the group don blindfolds and masturbate partners they could not see. (Another participant confirmed this in an interview.)

 

Albin Ifsich, who went on to have a long career as a violinist in the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, said that he had been abused by Mr. Levine for several years, beginning at Meadow Brook and continuing after he joined the group of young musicians who followed Mr. Levine to Cleveland and later New York.

 

Ashok Pai said he had been abused by Mr. Levine for years, beginning in 1986 near the Ravinia Festival in Illinois, when he was 16. Mr. Pai grew up near the festival, where Mr. Levine was music director, and wanted to become a conductor. Three decades later — after, Mr. Pai said, therapy had helped him realize how destructive those encounters had been — he detailed his accusations in the fall of 2016 to the Lake Forest Police Department in Illinois. Law enforcement officials said last year that they would not bring criminal charges against Mr. Levine, noting that while the state’s age of consent is now 17 — and 18 in some cases — it was still 16 in 1986.

 

Mr. Levine’s focus on and influence over the Met was rare in an era of jet-setting maestros: He conducted more than 2,500 performances with the company, far more than any other conductor. Since suffering a spinal injury in 2011 that caused him to miss two seasons, Mr. Levine has conducted from a wheelchair. It was only with great reluctance — and after a battle erupted behind the scenes when performers complained that it had grown difficult to follow his conducting — that Mr. Levine stepped down as music director in the spring of 2016. That year he acknowledged that he had Parkinson’s disease, which he had previously denied, and said that his difficulties on the podium were related to his medication.

 

 

Photo

In 1995, Mr. Levine, left, and Joseph Volpe, center, general manager of the Met, waking the baritone Thomas Hampson, who was discovered catching a nap in the opera house. Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

 

“Each time, the Met press office would tirelessly point out the cyclical nature of the gossip and the complete lack of substance,” she wrote.

 

In 1987, The Times reported that there were “conflicting rumors about his private life and an imminent resignation” without getting specific. Mr. Levine dismissed the stories in an interview with The Times, saying that he had been told years earlier that there were “reports of a morals charge in Pittsburgh or Hawaii or Dallas.”

 

“Both my friends and my enemies checked it out, and to this day, I don’t have the faintest idea where those rumors came from or what purpose they served,” he said at the time.

 

Mr. Gelb said in earlier interviews with The Times that Met records showed two instances when complaints about Mr. Levine’s behavior had reached top company officials. In 1979, he said, Anthony A. Bliss, who was then the Met’s executive director, got a letter from a board member asking about an anonymous letter containing accusations about Mr. Levine. Neither the board member’s letter nor the anonymous one could be obtained, making the exact nature of the accusations unclear. But a copy of Mr. Bliss’s response obtained by The Times shows that he dismissed them.

 

The second time, Mr. Gelb said, was the 2016 call he got from the Lake Forest Police, who were investigating Mr. Pai’s account. It was a year later, in December, when the company learned from media inquiries that more accusers were coming forward, that the Met suspended Mr. Levine and opened its own investigation.

Edited March 13, 2018 by WilliamM

[+ quoththeraven]

I find the highlighted statement completely unbelievable.

[+ g56whiz]

I find the highlighted statement completely unbelievable.

 

Of course it’s believable. Consider the three monkeys: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. (Wish I knew how to post a good gif with this iPhone.)

[+ WilliamM]

James Levine has brought a lawsuit against the Met:

 

The New York Times headline: Star Conductor, Fired Over Abuse Allegations, Sues Metropolitan Opera

 

The Lawsuit, filed in New York State Supreme Court, states that Mr. Levine "has clearly and unequivocally denied any wrongdoing in connection with those allegations," and paints his firing as a result of an effort by the Met's general manger, Peter Gelb, "to oust Levine from the Met and completely erase his legacy from the organization.

 

The suit seeks more than $5.8 million in damages.

 

Comment: Is this the correct decision for someone suffering from Parkinson's Disease. It is a very cruel disease.

[body2body]

James Levine has brought a lawsuit against the Met:

 

The New York Times headline: Star Conductor, Fired Over Abuse Allegations, Sues Metropolitan Opera

 

The Lawsuit, filed in New York State Supreme Court, states that Mr. Levine "has clearly and unequivocally denied any wrongdoing in connection with those allegations," and paints his firing as a result of an effort by the Met's general manger, Peter Gelb, "to oust Levine from the Met and completely erase his legacy from the organization.

 

The suit seeks more than $5.8 million in damages.

 

Comment: Is this the correct decision for someone suffering from Parkinson's Disease. It is a very cruel disease.

I predict this will be settled out of court as quietly as possible. While I'm sure the Met has all kinds of dirt on Mr. Levine, they will want to avoid a public airing of all the very dirty laundry in the hands of both sides.

[+ g56whiz]

I predict this will be settled out of court as quietly as possible. While I'm sure the Met has all kinds of dirt on Mr. Levine, they will want to avoid a public airing of all the very dirty laundry in the hands of both sides.

 

I predict it won’t be quite that simple. Terry Teachout of the WSJ is demanding that Peter Gelb disclose the entire report and the records of Levine’s employment or resign pointing out that donors deserve as much for their continued support.

[+ WilliamM]

WHAT JAMES LEVINE WANTS

March 16, 2018 by norman lebrecht

 

18 comments.

 

The saying at the Met for the past 40 years has been ‘what Jimmy wants, Jimmy gets’.

 

Last night Levine filed a $5.8 million lawsuit against the Metropolitan Opera, claiming unfair dismissal.

 

Money aside, he also wants a reinstatement of his reputation.

 

The Met has told him it will resist both demands.

 

So what’s really going on?

 

Levine’s past protestations of loyalty to the Met are being undermined by a hefty lawsuit that the company can ill afford. He would have known that before launching his claim. The Met, for its part, cannot afford for the case to come to court in case any of its officers is shown to have been aware of the conductor’s alleged misdemeanours.

 

So there will be a financial settlement, some way short of $5.8 million, funded by one or two board members.

 

And something else. Levine made it clear last night in his deposition that he felt betrayed by Peter Gelb, whom he accused of ‘a longstanding personal campaign to force Levine out of the Met.’

 

Levine helped put Gelb in his job 12 years ago. Now he’s signalling to the board that he won’t go quietly if Gelb keeps his seat. Gelb has just become a bargaining chip. Somebody is going to blink

 

Comment: I do not know Mr. Lebtrecht, or any of his past comment, but some of his points makes sense.

[+ g56whiz]

Comment: I do not know Mr. Lebtrecht, or any of his past comment, but some of his points makes sense.

 

They make a lot of sense.

 

The NYTimes piece points out that Levine made the Met Orchestra into one of the finest in the world. Those of us who were around the Met in the early ‘70’s know what an enormous feat this was and is. Back then there were nights under other conductors when it seemed the members tuned their instruments at home. And what the horn section did to Karl Böhm one evening was more than unmusical or unprofessional: it was pure evil and insulting to the audience. Levine over a short period changed all that. He did it by insisting on musical integrity and hiring according.

 

Two seasons ago, I was fascinated to watch Levine as he conducted the overture to what was probably his last Live in HD broadcast. There was really no discernible beat to his gestures but it didn’t seem to matter. The shared musicality over so many years was so strong that you could see that the instrumentalists were even breathing with him. It was pure magic.

 

And that’s the problem. Even if Levine’s disease were to progress no further, the orchestra has to change as personnel change. That magic is simply not sustainable over the long term. And that’s why I suspect Peter Gelb was in fact trying to push Levine aside. It appears that Levine’s hubris stood in the way. Gelb’s may be at fault too.

 

The real tragedy is that Levine has enormous amount to offer The Met or any other musical organization albeit not on the podium. There’s probably a whole new generation of singers and conductors who will lose access to his musical genius.

 

As for me, I’m still trying to reconcile my guilt at my awareness of what may have been occurring behind the scenes with my memories of the many magical nights I’ve spent in the Dress Circle Boxes.

[+ quoththeraven]

Of course it’s believable. Consider the three monkeys: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. (Wish I knew how to post a good gif with this iPhone.)

The gossip was too open, both about Levine's behavior and the Met bailing him out of tight spots, for this to be believable. Simply knowing, enabling and doing nothing is enough.

[sydneyboy]

What’s the latest (if any) on this sorry saga?

[instudiocity]

What’s the latest (if any) on this sorry saga?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2018/05/18/metropolitan-opera-says-james-levine-abused-harassed-7-people/625573002/

[sydneyboy]

Thank you.

[+ g56whiz]

What’s the latest (if any) on this sorry saga?

As @instudiocity indicated, Levine has sued the Met for a variety of things. In the meantime his successor, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, is building a rapport with singers and the orchestra that seems to match what I observed in the early days of Levine.

 

Interestingly, the conducting legend Gustavo Dudamel just mounted the Met podium for the first time with a well received run of Otello. He’s 37. He started conducting at La Scala at 25. One wonders if Levine is responsible for this unfortunate delay.