In 1966, while still working under Szell in Cleveland, Mr. Levine founded the University Circle Orchestra, an ensemble of young musicians who are particularly interested in contemporary music. The following year, he conducted the premiere of Milton Babbitt’s “Correspondences”, an immensely difficult 12-tone work, with the orchestra and won the composer’s lasting admiration.
In March 2018, the Boston Globe published a lengthy exposition of Mr. Levine’s years with this student ensemble in Cleveland, and uses a two dozen interviews with alumni and musicians, describing a cult-like atmosphere surrounding Mr. Levine developed, even though he was not much older. The participants, who became known as ‘Levinites’, remembered the diminution of their mentor, loyalty tests and even group sex.
Only 15 years after his Met debut, Levine’s leadership role was formalized there in 1986 when he became the artistic director of the house, a title that was scaled back to music director in 2004 when he began his tenure at the Boston Symphony.
He also had other important associations. He made his Salzburg Festival debut in 1976 under the direction of Mozart’s “La Clemenza di Tito” in a major Jean-Pierre Ponnelle production. In 1982, he debuted at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany, leading the centenary production of Wagner’s “Parsifal”. At the time, Bayreuth was still tainted by the anti-Semitism of Wagner and some of Wagner’s descendants, who held the festival during the rise of the Nazis and faltered with Hitler. The festival directors deliberately gave this milestone production to mr. Levine, who was Jewish, entrusted. ‘Parsifal’, a work he did with generous, clear eloquence, became a specialty in 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 identity of the Met, Mr. Levine did not turn the company into a home that cultivated new opera. For such a prestigious international institution, the list of Met’s 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, Mr. Levine that he is trying to commission new works, but that the Met is a monumental, slow-moving institution. He also once regrets the lack of good enough new operas.
In the nineties, Mr. Levine’s relationship with Joseph Volpe, the effective, striking general manager of the Met, is sometimes desperate. Mr. Volpe said Mr. Levine respected and gave him most of what he wanted, but lifted financially risky projects (such as a concert performance of Mahler’s terrifying ‘Symphony of a Thousand’) and several commissioning ideas.