Mark Levine

Verdi can be a challenge both vocally and in terms of acting, but Pavarotti and Marton are sensational, and Milnes was still excellent although clearly near the end of his career. The lyric beauty is there side by side with the dramatic power. (Tony Adams)

Levine's powerful and starrily cast DVD of Aida brings a grandly traditional staging…Zajick is a vibrant, powerful Amneris,and Sherrill Milnes, only just past his peak, is a magnificent Amonasro…Levine is in his element, drawing warm and dramatic playing and singing from his formidable team at the Met. (The Penguin Guide)

There's no more agreeable, melodious, or concordant sound on earth than that of a consort of viols, and Orlando Gibbons' music for these instruments is among the finest ever written. Besides its artful scoring and clever melodic invention, the essence of the music lies in its harmony, which brings sensuousness and emotional expression to a rare peak of refinement.

It takes a certain amount of forethought if Das Rheingold is to be more than a series of special effects scenes, though moments like the appearance of the giants through the mist or Alberich's transformations need to be as thrilling as they are here. As always in his Wagner, and perhaps especially in this very traditional 1990 Metropolitan Opera production of the Ring cycle, James Levine keeps to the forefront the underlying humanity of Wagner's gods and monsters. In the first scene, for example, he brings out the thoughtless, callous frivolity of the Rhine maidens as they precipitate the events of the four operas by taunting the gnome Alberich: it helps that they swirl around, green and gold, in a convincing representation of the bottom of the Rhine, but the emotions are the point. Ekkehaard Wlaschiha is a convincingly menacing Alberich partly because Levine brings out his vulnerability as well as his evil temper. James Morris is splendid as the younger less care-worn Wotan and Siegfried Jerusalem as Loge enjoys the sarcasm of his cynical commentary on Wotan's aspirations. The smaller parts have luxury casting: Matti Salminen as Fafner and Christa Ludwig as Fricka, for example.(Roz Kaveney)

Tenor Ben Heppner and soprano Jane Eaglen perform two of opera's most demanding roles in a 1999 production of “Tristan und Isolde,” Richard Wagner's titanic tragedy. Based on a Celtic myth, the 1865 drama charts the passions of the Irish queen Isolde and the Cornish knight Tristan. He's transporting her, against her will, to marry his uncle, King Marke (bass Rene Pape), but the two drink a potion that will ensure both their undying love for each other–-and their deaths. James Levine conducts the Met Orchestra.