James Levine
Star conductor has died
James Levine was 77 years old
© imago images / BRIGANI-ART
He shaped the Metropolitan Opera in New York for four decades and also conducted in Munich and Boston. Now James Levine is dead.
James Levine is dead. The long-time artistic director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York died on March 9th at the age of 77, as it became known on Wednesday (March 17th). The cause of death is not yet known, but according to the conductor's doctor, it was a natural death.
Between 1971 and 2017, Levine conducted more than 2,500 performances of 85 different operas in the world-famous opera house. Between 1999 and 2004 he was drawn to the Munich Philharmonic as chief conductor, then as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. After a fall during a concert and subsequent health problems, he resigned his post in Boston in 2011, and in 2016 he also resigned from his post as chief conductor of the Met.
Headlines overshadowed his retirement: in 2017, several men accused him of sexual abuse, some of them for years. An internal investigation by the Met concluded that he "used his reputation and position of power to hunt down and abuse artists". Levine denied the allegations and demanded millions in compensation from the Met, but failed in court.