Adjusting Medication May Prolong Levine’s Tenure at the Met

By MICHAEL COOPERFEB. 1, 2016

James Levine leading the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in May 2015. 

The stage was being set to announce the retirement of James Levine, the music director of the Metropolitan Opera since 1976, after his longstanding health woes seemed to worsen this season to the point that singers and musicians were having difficulty following his conducting.

But then Mr. Levine and Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, paid a visit last week to his neurologist for an update on his condition — and the doctor gave Mr. Levine an 11th-hour reprieve, saying that Mr. Levine’s most serious problems could probably be solved by adjusting the dosage of a medication that he has been taking for Parkinson’s disease.

The news cheered Mr. Levine, who had been saddened by the thought that his illness might force him to step down. “I hope he’s right, because I love the Met company more than I can describe,” the conductor said on Monday evening in an interview at the office of his neurologist, Dr. Stanley Fahn.

And it surprised Mr. Gelb, who said in an interview that he had been in talks with Mr. Levine about announcing the conductor’s retirement after this season and making him the Met’s music director emeritus. But Mr. Gelb said that he felt obligated, morally and artistically, to see if changing Mr. Levine’s dosage would improve his upper-body movement and help him return to normal.

“He has supported this company, he has given everything to this company, and I feel the Met’s responsibility is to support him as long as we can,” Mr. Gelb, who briefed the Met’s board members on the situation on Monday, said in an interview. “If in fact it’s possible that by regulating his medication he will be able to conduct like the James Levine of before, that would be a miraculous turn of events that everyone here would embrace and cheer for.”

The question of what to do about Mr. Levine — who is beloved by singers, musicians and audiences — poses a conundrum for the Met. He has not only shaped but also helped define the modern Metropolitan Opera since becoming its music director 40 years ago, conducting more than 2,500 performances, choosing repertoire and nurturing many careers.

But more than a decade’s worth of health problems — including Parkinson’s disease, back problems, and a severe spinal injury from a fall that forced him to miss two seasons and has left him conducting from a wheelchair — have taken a toll on his ability to lead vibrantly.

While his spinal injury has been improving, and his first two seasons back after his accident were largely a success, Mr. Levine, 72, appeared noticeably frailer this season, listing to the right in his wheelchair during some performances, and seeming to have trouble controlling his left arm. The performances he led of Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” and Strauss’s “Die Fledermaus” were well received, but he withdrew from the highlight of his season: a new production of Berg’s “Lulu,” an opera he brought into the Met’s repertory. That, he said, made him feel “terrible.”

Some of those well-reviewed performances came off with extraordinary measures behind the scenes, Met employees said. Orchestra players who had trouble reading Mr. Levine’s beat relied more on intuition of what they thought he would want and on watching the concertmaster. Singers onstage looked more to the prompter’s box for direction. And Donald Palumbo, the Met’s chorus master, conducted the chorus from the wings of the stage, with using an audio monitor to help him coordinate with the orchestra.

Mr. Levine said that he had feared his Parkinson’s was worsening. “I was surprised, and I was worried,” he said, noting that for a while he played “telephone tag” with his doctor and did not schedule an appointment for some time. “I didn’t want to be doing substandard performances and stay working too long, but I felt so good about the way I was able to work — other than this gestural thing.”

Dr. Fahn, an expert on Parkinson’s, said in an interview with Mr. Levine present that Mr. Levine had Parkinson’s disease, but that it did not seem to be progressing and that his involuntary movements, or dyskinesia, seemed to result from too high a dose of the medication L-dopa. “If you lower the dose, and keep him smooth at a lower dose, he should be able to do pretty well,” Dr. Fahn said, adding that he had reduced Mr. Levine’s medication on Thursday and was already seeing strong improvement.

Mr. Levine is scheduled to conduct the Philadelphia Orchestra this month in Philadelphia, and his next test at the Met will be in March, when rehearsals start for Verdi’s “Simon Boccanegra,” starring Plácido Domingo.

His health has been the subject of much speculation since last fall, when he repeatedly halted a final dress rehearsal of “Tannhäuser” that was supposed to be a run-through. But while he looked frail during the run, many of the performances were very moving. Anthony Tommasini, the chief classical music critic of The New York Times, wrote that Mr, Levine “had the requisite stamina and focus to lead a stirring and insightful account of ‘Tannhäuser.’” He added, though, that “once in a while his energy seemed to flag, and details went astray.”

Members of the company wished him well. David Frye, chairman of the Met’s chorus committee, said that “Jimmy is so well loved that the performers want to see him do his best.” But he acknowledged that there had been difficulties this season, saying, “it’s been a struggle for many people to interpret his conducting from the stage.”

Jessica Phillips, an acting principal clarinetist and chairwoman of the Met’s orchestra committee, said, “We continue to support him in his efforts to conduct in a healthy way,” and added, “He has built the Met orchestra and chorus into what it is today.”

So for now Mr. Levine and the Met are watching and waiting to see how he responds to his new regimen. Mr. Levine said that he hoped he was not done yet as music director.

“Sometime in the foreseeable future I have to stop, but I would hope that we could decide it in a way which wasn’t rushed by the fact that I wasn’t giving them what they need,” he said. “I’ve been a very lucky boy most of my life, and I don’t think anybody gets through life without having to solve a serious problem once in a while. But I want it to get, again, the way it was, because I think our collaboration isn’t finished.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/03/arts/music/adjusting-medication-may-prolong-levines-tenure-at-the-met.html?_r=0