[Publius]

I've been waiting for this.

Decades ago, I was involved in rehearsals for a summer opera concert where a consultant from the Met was present to assist. She mentioned that there was a line item in the Met's budget for "getting Jimmy out of trouble."

In New York's high society, Jimmy's predilections were well known, but he was such a force in the New York music scene that people were willing to overlook his activities.

In recent years, the Met board asked Jimmy to marry so that the stories could be squelched, but he opted not to do so. Now it all comes out.

[thecodont]

Incredible story. Wow.

[dfwgator]

Sounds like what happened with Jimmy Savile at the BBC for years.

[RightField]

One of my very best friends in the very early 70's was a voice major at Cleveland Institute of Music ... in fact she lived in the apartment right next to James Levine for a while, although they were not acquainted. She had a good male friend at the Institute who was studying composition and conducting. They got along famously ... did the summer opera camps together in Sante Fe and Wolf Trap, and voice studies at Julliard. After they left school, they decided to get married. We all thought everything was perfect. Then he got a job with a Midwest opera company and announced to her that he was gay, that he thought she had known all along, and that their marriage was really just a cover so they could both participate in the music world. She was devastated, of course. She confided in me that their sex life was infrequent, but she had assumed he was just a quirky musician.

She divorced him and became an alcoholic. Her life went downhill so fast, she couldn't handle the disappointment. Sadly, she developed MS and passed away at a relatively young age.

Life was so different then. I always ached for her