James Levine, the Metropolitan Opera’s music director, plagued with back injuries (the painful effect of which I witnessed while attending his nonetheless powerful performance of Wagner‘s “Die Walküre” last April), has come to terms with the obvious: He needs an extended rehabilitation period before he can commit to the rigors of conducting at the Met.
In a statement accompanying the Met’s press release, he noted that he is only just about to leave the hospital, after a three-month stay for physical rehab.
Still, while Fabio Luisi has assumed the principal conductor’s post, it is anticipated that Levine will “gradually resume his other music director duties, including coaching and planning, and artistic leadership of the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program,” according to the Met’s announcement.
In his personal statement, Levine reported that his “prognosis is excellent.” But he added:
I am now in the position of having to predict when I will again be ready to conduct….We have come to the conclusion that it would be profoundly unfair to the public and the Met company to announce a conducting schedule for me that may have to be altered at a later date. I do not want to risk having to withdraw from performances after the season has been announced and tickets sold.
I am one of those disappointed ticket holders. I greatly missed Levine in this fall’s “Siegfried” and will miss him again this January in “Götterdämmerung.”
I’m in as much denial as is Levine: I still eagerly await his return to the podium where he belongs. Hope springs eternal. To so many of us, the Divine Levine is the Met.