Mr. Levine was cautious about his private life and always refused to discuss his sexual orientation or romantic relationships. In a 1998 interview with The New York Times, Levine explained why he refused to comment on rumors and “such nonsense” over the years. “I was never able to speak in public about my private life,” he said. “Day after day, my world is filled with real music, real people, real interactions,” he said, adding almost regretfully: “How much do you have to give? Do you have to be good? “
In 1966, while still working with Szell in Cleveland, Levine founded the University Circle Orchestra, a group of young musicians particularly interested in contemporary music. The following year, he conducted the debut of Milton Babbitt’s “Correspondences”, a formidably difficult 12-tone work with the orchestra, and won the enduring admiration of his composer.
In March 2018, the Boston Globe published a long exposure of Levine’s years with this group of students in Cleveland, based on about two dozen interviews with alumni and musicians, who described an atmosphere of worship that developed in around Levine, although he was not much older. The participants, who became known as “Levinites”, recalled their mentor’s depreciation, loyalty tests and even group sex.
Just 15 years after his debut at the Met, Levine’s leadership role was formalized in 1986, when he became the artistic director of the house, a title that was reduced to music director in 2004, when he started his tenure with the Symphony Orchestra. Boston.
He also had other important associations. He made his debut at the Salzburg Festival in 1976, conducting Mozart’s “La Clemenza di Tito” in a production by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle. In 1982, he debuted at the Bayreuth Festival, in Germany, conducting Wagner’s centennial production of “Parsifal”. At the time, Bayreuth was still tainted by Wagner’s anti-Semitism and some of his descendants, who ran the festival during the rise of the Nazis and had relations with Hitler. Festival directors purposely entrusted this remarkable production to Levine, who was Jewish. “Parsifal”, a work he conducted with ample and luminous eloquence, became a specialty of Levine.
Although he made 20th-century operas such as Schoenberg’s “Moses und Aron”, Berg’s “Lulu” and Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress” central to the Met’s identity, Levine failed to turn the company into a home that fed a new opera. For such a prestigious international institution, the list of Met premieres during the Levine era, including works by John Corigliano, John Harbison, Philip Glass, Tobias Picker and Tan Dun, was not long.
In interviews over the years, Levine stated that he tried to commission new work, but that the Met was a monumental and slow institution. He also once lamented the lack of new good enough operas.