¶ The conductor James Levine’s continuing struggle with back problems has caused him to wipe clean his slate of performances between next week and next fall, music officials said on Friday. The casualties include a long-awaited Metropolitan Opera tour to Japan and the Tanglewood Festival season.
MetOpera 日本ツアー指揮者交替 [音楽時評]
Metropolitan Opera 日本ツアー；6/1～6/19 に同行する予定だったMusic Director, James Levine が，脊椎手術後の休養に当たることとして，日本ツアーには同行しなくなったそうです．
代役は，Principal Guest Conductor で 次期 Music Director として極めて有力視されているFabio Luisi が当るそうです．ただ，Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor.” は，Gianandrea Noseda が振る予定です．
夏には Boston Symphony 関連でTanglewood 出演は全てキャンセルですが，代役は未定です．
Boston Bymphony の秋の開幕公演は， Anne-Sophie Mutter will open the season in Boston on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 as conductor and soloist in Mozart violin concertos. と二役をこなす予定です． its concerts at Carnegie Hall and during a California tour in December は，前者はKurt Masur, Christoph Eschenbach and Stéphane Denève で，後者は Ludovic Morlot, a former assistant conductor in Boston and the incoming music director of the Seattle Symphony, will take over the California trip.とあります．
あとBoston の代役には，Jiri Belohlavek, Andris Nelsons and Marcelo Lehninger，さらには，Bernard Haitink が予定されているそうです．
結構，羨ましいほどの代役陣ですね．Andris Nelsons がLevine の後を継ぐMusic Director の有力候補であることは，前に紹介したことがあります．
Levine Withdraws From Met Tour and Tanglewood
By DANIEL J. WAKIN
Published: May 6, 2011
Multimedia
¶ The physical woes of Mr. Levine, 67, have been unrelenting, causing repeated cancellations over the last few years. The biggest casualty came in March, when he was forced to resign as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He also cut back on Met opera performances this spring.
¶ Now, the Met reports, he is bowing out of a three-week tour of Japan in June. “Following his doctors’ advice, James Levine is taking the summer off to rest and recuperate from his ongoing back condition,” the Met said in a statement. The principal guest conductor, Fabio Luisi, who Met officials say is a likely candidate to succeed Mr. Levine as music director, will take over conducting duties in runs of Puccini’s “Bohème” and Verdi’s “Don Carlo” in Japan. Gianandrea Noseda is still scheduled to lead Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor.”
¶ The tour is already shadowed by worries among members of the Met company about safety threats that could be posed by damage to nuclear reactors in Japan caused by the recent earthquake. The Met has said that conditions are safe and that the tour is proceeding.
¶ Also on Friday, the Met said that Mr. Luisi would take over for Mr. Levine for the Met Orchestra’s May 15 concert at Carnegie Hall, with Natalie Dessay as soloist. Richard Strauss’s “Don Juan” will take the place of Debussy’s “Images” on the program.
¶ Mr. Levine has been looking increasingly weak, needing assistance to come on stage for bows and tooling around the Met in a mobile chair. But his conducting motions have remained vigorous, and he has plowed through five hours of Wagner’s “Walküre” in recent performances.
¶ In an almost simultaneous announcement, the Boston Symphony said that Mr. Levine would step aside from his duties conducting and teaching at Tanglewood, where he was to lead the symphony as well as the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, made up of students. Replacements have yet to be announced. A student orchestra performance of Debussy’s “Pelléas et Mélisande” was scrapped, sure to be a disappointment to the young musicians as well as to audiences who have come to value the enthusiastic performances with Mr. Levine and the Tanglewood fellows, as the students are called.
¶ As of now, the only dates on Mr. Levine’s schedule until the fall are performances of “Die Walküre,” the second installment of the Met’s new “Ring” cycle, on Monday and on May 14. The May 14 performance is to be broadcast live in HD around the world. His next Met performance after that is Oct. 13, with the opening of a new production of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.”
¶ The announcements concerning Mr. Levine’s withdrawals came on the day the Boston Symphony disclosed his replacements for next season, including conductors for its concerts at Carnegie Hall and during a California tour in December.
¶ Kurt Masur, Christoph Eschenbach and Stéphane Denève will lead the orchestra for the March 6-9, 2012, Carnegie stand, and Ludovic Morlot , a former assistant conductor in Boston and the incoming music director of the Seattle Symphony, will take over the California trip.
¶ Instead of Mr. Levine, Anne-Sophie Mutter will open the season in Boston on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 as conductor and soloist in Mozart violin concertos. The tour substitutes will take over Mr. Levine’s other concerts in Boston, along with Jiri Belohlavek, Andris Nelsons and Marcelo Lehninger.
¶ In addition, Bernard Haitink has been engaged as a guest conductor for three programs, leading Beethoven symphonies, Stravinsky’s “Symphony of Psalms” and Mendelssohn’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” with narration by Claire Bloom. Esa-Pekka Salonen will also take the podium at the Boston Symphony for the first time since 1988.
