The Met's Young Master

The aisle door opened quietly. A large man padded gracefully in and paused behind the standees at the rear of the orchestra floor. He peered intently at the stage and listened. His blue shirt was open at the neck, and over it he wore a bright red cardigan. He could have been a stagehand out for a stroll. Instead, James Levine, the new music director of the Metropolitan Opera, was making his rounds. It was the season's last performance of The Barber of Seville. Levine had seen and heard it countless times before. That did not matter to the man charged with preserving and restoring the troubled company's musical excellence. He prefers to make his own quality checks, and besides, a new bass, Andrew Foldi, was singing his first Bartolo.

No day is a typical day in the life of James Levine (rhymes with divine). Anything can go wrong at the Met. It can involve a problem today, tonight, tomorrow, next year or 1978. Last week Beverly Sills had to bow out of La Traviata on a few hours' notice because of the flu. That was easy: Rita Shane, her cover, was standing by.

The next day offered less surprise, but it did seem to go on forever. At 9 a.m. Levine was at home studying Der Rosenkavalier, which he will conduct at the Met later this season. There were phone calls to Salzburg about the performances of Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito this summer. At 2 p.m. Levine was at the Met for a staff meeting to tie up loose ends in the casting and scheduling for next season. The session lasted almost until the 8 p.m. curtain. No supper--and a good thing too: he is a 5-ft. 10-in., 200-pounder trying to lose weight. Back home at 10 p.m., Levine worked until the wee hours at his desk on Berg's Lulu; he will be conducting it next season at the Met. Next day brought a meeting at a midtown hotel about this June's Ravinia Festival near Chicago, of which he is music director. Then home for a two-hour nap, dinner, and off to the Met to conduct Aida.

The Aural Part. If Levine is a man in a hurry, he obviously thrives on it. "I never had even a tiny, faint conflict about what I wanted to do, not for as long as I can remember," he says. As a piano prodigy of ten, Levine played the Mendelssohn Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Cincinnati Symphony. When it came time for a reward from his delighted parents, the answer was quick: "I want to go to New York and to the Metropolitan Opera." Later, as a student at the Juilliard School he could usually be found at the opera three times a week. Speaking metaphorically, as he often does, Levine says: "I know what the Met can do when all its lights are on. I mean, I grew up in that house."

The Met has had brilliant nights in recent years, but only sporadically. The company's big problem right now is to try to get all its lights going on a regular basis. Levine, 32, formally takes over next fall but in fact is already installed in the job. He is part of a troika headed by Executive Director Anthony A. Bliss, who has the final say on everything. But as an administrator, Bliss has declared his intention of staying out of day-to-day artistic decisions. Below him are Levine and Production Director John Dexter, 50, a stage director who has worked at the National Theater in England and on Broadway. "It's a new way of running this house, and it remains to be seen how successfully it works," says Levine. "I'm responsible for the aural part, John's responsible for the visual part."

In effect, the Met is being run by committee. How well that succeeds only time will tell. The staging of the ambitious new production of Aida, introduced a fortnight ago, turned out to be dull and far too stylized, but musically it was exciting. The Triumphal Scene was a staggering series of orchestral and choral climaxes. The Nile Scene, that exotic musical fantasy conjured up by Verdi to heighten the opera's denouement, shimmered with color and mystery.

Levine has guest-conducted most of the major orchestras in the U.S. and is already finding it necessary to say no. He might as well get used to it, because saying no is part of the Met music director's job. "We try to reconcile the house's interest with that of the individual," he says. But it cannot always be done. "One problem we face is that there are fewer great singers of the big-voice type than there were. And lighter-voiced singers have been paid a great price for things they were not really up to, and so didn't have the time to grow."

Another problem for Levine is that his office is not yet ready. Operating almost out of his hip pocket, he bounces happily from one floor to another, borrowing rooms, meeting with the orchestra manager in the basement, rapping with the stage managers near the light-board. He is quickly recognizable. "I can't work in a coat and tie," he says. Adds Singer Marilyn Home: "He must have 50 colors of the same sweater." If he needs to dress formally, Levine can dash home in ten minutes to change at the West Side apartnient he shares with his girl friend, an oboist. He is a man in a major-key mood, and he is convinced that his presence--he will conduct two to four performances a week for half of each season--will make a difference in the Met's night-by-night standard. "God endowed me very well with a good ear, and every time I've been on the right track I could feel it." Jimmy Levine feels it very much these days.

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