He gave his first concert as a pianist at the age of ten, studied at the Juilliard School in New York and made his conducting debut at the age of 18. In 1973 James Levine was appointed chief conductor of the Metropolitan Opera New York, a post he held for more than four decades, conducting more than 2,500 performances of 85 different operas there. He made the Metropolitan Opera one of the most famous opera houses in the world – also through the television broadcasts “Live from the Met”.
He appeared at the Bayreuth Festival almost every year from 1982 to 1998, conducting highly acclaimed performances of Wagner’s “Parsifal.” His interpretation of the four-part opera cycle “Der Ring des Nibelungen” was so extraordinary that the production went down in festival history at the time as the “Levine Ring.” Levine’s musical concept had an almost narcotic effect, wrote the German weekly magazine “Die Zeit” at the time. He was also a regular guest with the Vienna Philharmonic and at the Salzburg Festival.