Arthur Kaptainis: We have entered the post-James Levine era

The name “Levine” and the word “rumours” last appeared in the Montreal Gazette in the same paragraph in 2004, when I noted in a column mostly about James Levine’s health problems that “the most visible maestro of the Americas” had been “the subject of unrelenting rumours throughout his career.”
In those halcyon days it was possible to reject the stories as fictions generated by envious rivals, disgruntled vocalists or just people with operati