In Monday’s (4/5) Boston Globe, Associated Press reporter Ronald Blum writes, “Conductor James Levine will have a second back operation and will miss the rest of his increasingly diminished Metropolitan Opera season. The 66-year-old, who is the music director of the Met and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, had surgery last fall to repair a herniated disk in his back and returned to the podium Dec. 3. The Boston Symphony Orchestra announced March 22 he would miss three weeks, his final programs at Symphony Hall this season, because of back problems. The Met said Sunday he will have corrective surgery on his lower back and had withdrawn from four performances of Puccini’s ‘Tosca’ and a three-performance revival of Berg’s ‘Lulu.’ He will be replaced by Fabio Luisi. … He remains scheduled to conduct the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’ symphony on July 9 at the opening of its Tanglewood summer season in Lennox, Mass., the first of several weeks of programs he is to lead there. Levine is due back at the Met to conduct a new production of Wagner’s ‘Das Rheingold’ on Sept. 27, the opening night of a 2010-11 season that marks the 40th anniversary of his debut with the company in June 1971.”
Posted April 5, 2010
