In New York, a few days before the September season, James Levine, music director at the Metropolitan Opera for 40 years, declared himself unfit to work. This came as no surprise to anyone outside the Met. Levine has been in failing health for a decade and was unable to hold a baton without shaking, but the Met had no succession strategy and, consequently, began its season headless.
This, however, was no bad thing. La Scala has been maestro-free for six years since Muti quit. The Teatro Real in Madrid has no music director. Both get by very nicely with guest batons, who help diversify the orchestra's skills. Covent Garden might consider doing the same when Antonio Pappano moves on in 2015 or so.
Taken together, these unconnected events suggest a seismic shift at both ends of the spectrum — upheavals on the shop floor and alterations in management structure. One further evolution serves to convince me that, 20 years on, the myth is finally smashed. Gustavo Dudamel's arrival at 28 years old as head of the Los Angeles Philharmonic was historic not just for his extreme youth but for his innate iconoclasm.
Raised on tough streets in Venezuela, the Dude was not interested in giving concerts for rich toffs. He gave a free welcome gig in the Hollywood Bowl and got kids from the hoods to sing in Mahler's Second. While he respects his mentors Rattle, Barenboim and Claudio Abbado, Dudamel goes his own sweet way, unworried by rank.
His resident conductor, effectively his deputy, is Lionel Bringuier, five years his junior, and he regularly thrusts El Sistema graduates like himself on to the world stage. The average podium age has dropped in the last five years faster than in the last 50.
Dudamel, tuned to an alternative demographic, is concerned with projecting classical music beyond the concert hall — in cinemas and online. He is less concerned with the paying public, ageing and waning, than with the potential audience. He and his rising band of followers are a breed that knew not Joseph — Goebbels or Stalin — and owe no debt to history. The very title "maestro" seems misplaced for men so adventurous.
There is still some way to go before history is over. Women have yet to make an impact at the top and the cumbersome music business continues to cultivate vanities. Nevertheless, I am confident that The Maestro as we have known him since 1865 is now defunct. And the terminal date to be carved on the tombstone will be 2011.
