Interview with James Levine in New York

[dirac]

As a rule I do not link to New York magazine on principle since they did away with the position of regular dance critic (or, indeed, any dance critic), but there are some interesting things in this profile of James Levine, particularly regarding the new regime at the Met.

“The crisis of how to enact opera onstage visually has some alarming facets,” he says. “I’m referring to productions the composer and librettist would denounce. I’m speaking of a production that uses a piece instead of presents the piece. People will say, ‘Oh, Jimmy—he’s so fanatic.’ But a lot of people are willfully rearranging what happens onstage in order to make some original point, which has nothing to do with the way the composer and librettist imagined it. I’m not talking about anything as simple-minded as whether the period was changed. I’ve been to performances where the period was changed and it was very good. But there are so many contemporary productions that just destroy the piece, for nothing. In Europe especially, the reaction to a performance is often, ‘Well, wasn’t that interesting . . . ?’ ” he says dryly. “I’m tempted to say, ‘Okay, the next time I come to your theater, whatever the opera is that we’re doing, I will have the wind players play the string part and the string players play the wind part—and it’ll be very interesting.’ ”