James Levine

18 March 2021

James Levine

A Life Seen by Anthony Tommasini 

Yesterday's New York Times carried an obituary

 (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/17/obituaries/james-levine-dead.html?searchResultPosition=3) 

and a review in the Music section

(https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/17/arts/music/james-levine-met-opera-dead.html?searchResultPosition=2) 

reporting on the life and career of James Levine, a long-time conductor at the Metropolitan Opera..  Both were written by Anthony Tommasini, the Chief Music Critic for the NYT.  

James Levine at Carnegie Hall in 2004. He first conducted at the Metropolitan Opera in 1971 and soon became music director, leading 2,552 performances.

Levine had a remarkable career and was a major force shaping the Met over several decades.  His career ended in disgrace  in 2018 amid credible claims of his sexual predation on younger male musicians.  The two articles are well written and informative, not surprising from the skillful writer Anthony Tommasini.

Over the course of this winter's Covid confinement, I read Tommasini's The Indespensable Composers, a very readable overview some of the greatest composers from the 17th through the 20th centuries.  It's a book I recommend.

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/7owAAOSwstJfED3I/s-l300.jpg


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Revisiting Delaware's Flag

Image
  Revisiting Delaware's Flag : The Delaware flag was adopted in 1913.  It, like many other state flags, is a "seal - on - a - bedsheet" [actually a coat of arms] .   In 2001 the North American Vexillological Association ran an online membership poll of members asking them to rank the design of the flags of 72 US and Canadian state, province, and territorial flags. https://nava.org/digital-library/design/surveys/2001-State-Provincial-Flag-Survey.pdf . (I am a member of NAVA but was not then.)   Delaware came in 52 nd place. I thought I could give Delaware a quick redo. First, Lets get rid of the coat of arms and the text. I've kept the color selection, with its historical connection to Revolutionary War Delaware uniforms.     Then make the diamond larger.    Does it need anything else?  This may be enough.   I tried out a chicken, another Delaware historical association, this one lifted from a painting of mine, "Chanticleer."   Too cartoony.  Here's
Read more

Not Really Crabs

Image
  22 June 2021 CRABS & SUCH 3. NOT REALLY CRABS   "Horseshoe Crab" is a 8 x 10 inch acrylic on canvasboard depicting the so-called living fossil Limulus polyphemus, which we can see on the shores of the brackish reaches of the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays, and elsewhere on the Atlantic Coast. Not a crab, and more closely related to spiders, it's a fascinating creature that's been around for millennia, swimming upside down, sporting seven eyes, and with blue blood rather than red. The oxygen transport in the horseshoe's blood is the copper metalloprotein  hemocyanin rather then the iron metalloprotein hemoglobin that most of the animal world depends on.  Think iron rust red, copper tarnish blue. Read up on him at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_crab#Harvest_for_blood. Then there are the seriously dead and extinct trilobites, one of which I painted in "Before Adam."  They are also not closely related to crabs, but have a similar shape. I dug up
Read more

ART, BOOKS, LIFE, & MORE

Image
    12 March  2021 ART, BOOKS, LIFE, & MORE   I've emailed, texted, Facebooked, and else about my art, photography, activities, books, collections, and more to many of you, but now I thought I should consolidate all of this in a blog.  Here's the start.  I expect to update about once a week. Winter is finally closing up.  As one last winter activity I did a painting for a neighbor.  For a Christmas card for 2020, I painted a scene on 18th St reminiscing about neighborhood snow parties when it seemed like we would be snowed out from work in the morning.  The painting was in gouache on paper. The walking figures were done separately and combined via Photoshop.  Our house in red brick is at the top of the hill on the left.       A neighbor on the other side of 18th St asked about a painting of that side.  I painted this as a gift, acrylic on canvasboard.   Warmer weather posts to come!  
Read more