The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music news: Does the case of James Levine show that maestros, money and media are too tilted toward celebrity?

By Jacob Stockinger

In yesterday’s usual weekly news roundup, I posed a quesiton: Is too much media given to celebrity maestros?

And I left out the most egregious or obvious case right now grabbing headlines.

I’m talking about the legendary conductor  James Levine (below) who just dropped his post with the Boston Symphony Orchestra from his roster to keep the Metropolitan Opera.

In case, you haven’t read enough about maestro Levine and his back problems, kidney problems, weight problems and health problems in general:

How about the positive benefits and good fallout from his troubles?

And then his repeatedly canceling individual concerts?

And then canceling the rest of his season?

And then leaving the Boston Symphony altogether?

Not that the celebrated maestro is indecisive.

Here’s a sequence of events and stories that shows how the celebrated opera maestro has created and starred in his own opera. And it is grand!

http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2011/02/28/can_less_mean_more_for_levine_at_the_bso/

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/james-levine-to-resign-as-music-director-of-boston-symphony-orchestra/

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/james_levine/index.html

http://www.npr.org/music/genres/classical/

What about his legacy?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/arts/music/04levine.html

Looks like it may be time to update the Wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Levine