By HERBERT KUPFERBERG

Strictly as the musical director of the Metropolitan Opera in the year of its centennial celebration, James Levine would seem to have an unassailable claim to the title of Musician of the Year. Yet he is equally deserving of the designation purely on the basis of his personal attainments. He is a brilliant conductor of both opera and symphony, a fine pianist, a skilled chamber musician, and a highly successful administrator—not to mention something of a television personality, thanks to repeated appearances on “Live From the Met” and other nationwide telecasts. “Jimmy” Levine is the most recognizable and popular American conductor since “Lenny” Bernstein. It’s no wonder that most of the music world seems to consider itself on a first-name basis with both.

A brief recital of dates illustrates the rapid progress of Levine’s ascent to the dominant artistic position at America’s most prestigious opera house. He made his conducting debut at the Met in 1971 (directing Tosca at a June Festival in Rudolf Bing’s next-to-last season), was named principal conductor in 1973, and promoted to music director in 1976. Under his new contract, which runs through the 1990-91 season, he is to assume the title of artistic director in 1986. As Martin Mayer notes in his centennial book The Met: “The story of the Metropolitan Opera as it moves into its second century will likely be in large part the story of the mid-life of James Levine.”

All this represents a remarkable achievement for a forty-year-old musician who began life as a piano prodigy in his home town of Cincinnati and who served his conducting apprenticeship for six years as assistant to George Szell in Cleveland. Levine himself is well aware of the swiftness and scope of his rise to fame.

“I lead a sort of supremely fulfilling life,” he said recently in his modest, business-like office at the Metropolitan Opera House. “It’s rare to find someone as fortunate as I am. I’m fortunate to be talented, to be healthy, to have the opportunity to work with such great musicians. I’m fortunate to be able to give so many people satisfaction. In a world where there are so many negatives, it becomes a real spiritual necessity to find such a positive as the pleasures of music. I know that the day-long centennial observance we had last October was an indescribably satisfying experience. I’ve never felt so exhausted and elated at the same time.”

When Levine took over as music director he dedicated himself to a double program of broadening the Met’s repertory (notably in the direction of modernity) and of replacing or refurbishing some of the productions already in service. Most observers would give him high marks for his endeavors, especially in the first category. The Levine regime has seen Metropolitan premieres of such twentieth-century works as Berg’s complete Lulu, Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex, Britten’s Billy Budd, Poulenc’s Les Dialogues des Carmelites and Les Mamelles de Tiresias. It also has brought forth belated productions of such previous absentees as Mozart’s Idomeneo and Handel’s Rinaldo (scheduled for early1984) as well as such long neglected operas as Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète and Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini (another 1984 entry).

But for all his administrative accomplishments and organizational skills, Levine remains first and foremost a musician. Since coming to the Met at the tender age of twenty-eight he has conducted nearly fifty different operas. His familiarity with the entire range of music might stamp him as a Renaissance man, were it not that he is also a Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Modern man. On the Met’s podium he has found himself equally at home in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Verdi’s I Vespri Siciliano, Wagner’s Tannhäuser, Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande and Berg’s Wozzeck. Whether intentionally or not, Levine conveys the impression that the opera hasn’t been written that he can’t conduct—and conduct with distinction.

He brings the same feeling of energy and enthusiasm to all aspects of his musical life. He is now into his second decade as music director of the Ravinia Festival, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He also spends a portion of each summer at the Salzburg Festival in Austria. And he has conducted several times at Bayreuth and in 1985 will go to Israel to conduct the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. He finds time for a substantial recording schedule, notably with the Chicago Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra. He recently made his movie debut as the conductor of the Zeffirelli La Traviata.

With all this, Levine remains very much dedicated to his job as artistic leader of the Met, which is his home for two-thirds of the year. “You can’t do this job in less than eight months,” he says. “The best periods of achievement always come when the music director is committed to lengthy periods of work, as against flying around doing two weeks here and four weeks there. I think conductors in general are taking their work more seriously today; the era of jetting around may be passing. I don’t think people are complaining that I’m not around enough. Some may even be saying I’m here too much!”

Levine sees two recent events as enabling him to help move the Met to even higher levels of artistic consistency and achievement—his formal designation as artistic director, and the signing of a new contract with the orchestra that should assure labor peace almost to the end of the decade.

“With seven performances a week there can be great things and not-so-great things, and I want to make the percentage of great things as high as I can,” he says. “I think that my new title and the new contract will solidify the way our artistic direction works and make our planning process more efficient. That will give me a chance to fulfill even more of my artistic dreams. There are a staggering lot of things I’d like to see us do—there’s a whole repertory we could do on a smaller stage: if we could find one.”

As important a figure as he already is on the American musical scene, James Levine is likely to play an even more significant role in the years just ahead if only because opera, thanks to television, radio, and movies, is becoming far more integral to this country’s cultural and entertainment life than ever before.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that television helps to bring people into the opera house,” Levine says. “This whole concept of playing an entire season to ninety-three and ninety-four percent of capacity is something new. There is more enthusiasm for opera today than I’ve ever known previously.”

“I myself really have two major artistic objectives—to serve the composer as much as possible, and to make a constructive contribution to the general artistic environment. With a lot of hard work and a lot of good fortune you get a chance to fulfill desires like that. I never feel satisfied with what I’m doing, but I feel very happy, stimulated, excited. I feel that I’m getting better and better and that the company is getting better and better. And that’s what a life in music is all about.”