>> rose: welcome to the program t is summertime and we're looking at some of the best moments from the past year. tonight a conversation with one of classical music's leading figures. opera conductor james levine. >> i had to be so exposed in this city in order to have, to make use of the situation we had to make making our results better. and the public understood this continuously. and the interaction with them is so beautiful. and i think it's, i don't think-- it's not possible in art for everybody to like everything. but it is possible for them to understand what it takes to do it. and that if it was so easy any idiot could do it lying down. >> rose: james levine for the hour next.

>> funding for charlie rose is provided by the following: >> there's a saying around here: you stand behind what you say. around here, we don't make excuses, we make commitments. and when you can't live up to them, you own up and make it right. some people think the kind of accountability that thrives on so many streets in this country has gone missing in the places where it's needed most. but i know you'll still find it, when you know where to look. >> rose: additional funding provided by: >> and by bloomberg. a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by

rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪. >> you dare yourself to play the first three notes in the speed and drive and force an power and excitement that you really think they should have. >> rose: the maestro is back, james levine is the music director of the metropolitan opera. after missing two seasons due to a spinal chord injury he returned to the met last month to conduct one of his favorite operas,. the associated press writes that levine lead his beloved musicians like a man rejuvenated. here's a look. ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ ♪ (applause) james levine has been a major force at the met for more than 40 years, conducting some 2,500

performances and shaping the way opera sounds. "the new york times" calls him, quote, one of the greatest living conductors. this season he will also conduct a new production of falstaff and a revival. i am very pleased to have him back at this table. welcome. >> thanks, charlie it is great to see you. >> rose: it really is good. you look great. >> i feel great. >> rose: we'll talk a little bit about what you have been through and what you have learned. is that the happiest time for you n that organize tra-- , extrapit, are you conducting genius, mozart. >> yes, i would say it doesn't get happier than that. to be doing what you're cut out to do, what you have the talent for, the drive for, the wish for, and especially under miraculous circumstances, it was-- it was an amazing feeling. it always is. >> rose: and it must be especially amazing if you did not know whether you would ever be able to do

that. >> well, it's-- i fell. and my back, hi had terrible trouble with my back. i was in tremendous pain. nothing seemed to cure it. and i had to have surgery. and once the surgery was finished and i was out of pain, it was successful. i fell. and when i fell, i didn't disturb the surgery but i wound up with a major spinal cord injury which meant that, i really couldn't move some things. i couldn't move my legs, and gradually through really caring treatment and therapy and rehab, all this, it gradually comes back. and i am able to let him work again and my colleagues tell me and i can hear from the audience that they're not relating it to the way i was before i had to stop because of the fall, but to years before when i really had the vitality and i wasn't in any pain.

absolutely, there's no doubt about it i just don't have pain. i get a twinge here or there and it's gone am but i don't have anything-- nothing like a chronic pain anywhere. >> rose: but did you doubt that you might not ever stand there or sit there again? >> when you're lying in a hospital bed and you look down at your legs and you can't move them, you think to yourself, well, yeah, i could conduct with my upper body but i wouldn't have been able to conduct with-- you know, without feeling some kind of flow through the whole thing. because you conduct with your body on some level or other, even though it is possible to conduct just fine sitting down. many people do. but luckily, the return started to come. and the surgery held and the nerves began to come back, nerve does it on their own time. but i worked hard on the muscles so that i would have a possibility for the nerves to hookup again. and the therapists have got

me now walking, in a walker, carefully. and recently i started to climb upstairs. which is, you know, was unthinkable when i was lying there and i couldn't move them. >> rose: did you learn something from this experience? >> well, you learn millions of things. first of all, i didn't know that i could work again, and i thought to myself, i always thought i was the luckiest guy in the world and i had 40 years at the met and 50 years of musical, professional musical activity and i thought, well, if i'm supposed to stop now, i will. and what can you do. and i would have pursued other aspects of music. there are many things that interest me, of course. but i don't know, i suppose as i found the-- my body began to respond. and i was encouraged to work harder and harder at the

rehab. the feeling that i wouldn't be able to do it just disappeared. >> rose: it is a triumph it of the human spirit. >> to doubt about it. >> rose: that's what it is about. >> there is one other thing that is really important in this case. for the entire time, i got messages and letters and phone calls and vibrations, not just from my loved ones and my friends and from the company, but from the public, from people i don't even know. and i would go in the park and hide in my wheelchair and people would just, on their bikes, go by and say words of encouragement. and i felt more a part of the community even than i ever had before. though i have lived here all my adult life. >> rose: you know, it's a great feeling. because you realize that you touch people's lives that you don't really know. you know the music. you know the audience and the hall. and you know the critics who say good things. but you realize when you're

in a place where you are, that what you do connects to their life. it brings something special. >> i never realized it to that extent. i was moved so much by their presence. they all said the same thing. come back, we need you, whatever it takes. ♪ ♪ ♪. >> rose: you have said, and i think you're saying here, that you found yourself psychologically in a state that was even better than before you were injured. i mean not just at your best when you were young, but even a better place. >> yes, it was better because i had all that experience and i had been through all that. and i had this experience which stopped me cold. and two years of not conducting when i had conducted all my life. and so it was i think, i

mean it's a misfortune to have a spinal cord injury. but i learned so much from the doctors and therapists and the whole teams of people who were workinging with spinal cord patients, a world i might never have known at all. and when i went back to working i started off in the second year of my rehab, i wasn't ready to conduct yet. but i went back working with the young artist in our young artist program. and this was so thrilling, i think, as i get older i feel it's a more important, more and more important part of our work to pass on our experience to the next generation. and i got sort of back into it that way. and i really still feel like i'm living in a dream, and that i got out of that nightmare that i was in. >> rose: 670-- 70 is not old for a conductor. >> no.

>> rose: is that because music just makes you young -- >> largely. i think it has to do with something-- apparently the way most conductors work, there's a lot of-- . >> rose: the movement of hand. >> a lot of body exercise, a lot of this. and that's very good for you. and it makes you tired, so you sleep. i think most conductors who died before living to a ripe old age either had some congenital ailment or they smoked continuously so they got smoke-related things. >> rose: when you went, i think, to carnegie hall was may 2013. tell me about that. >> you mean the first concert? >> rose: yeah. >> this was unbelievable. this was like you dream something positive, and then it happens even more in reality than you could have dreamed. and charlie, i'm not-- i don't go through life

sentimental all the time. i really don't. but there was no way i could be in that experience and not feel touched and moved. it was right where i lived. there it was, my orchestra which i hadn't worked with in two years there it was, music that we hadn't played before and that i had done often and wanted to play with them. and there was that audience there, giving us every-- every bit of concentration, support and love and of excitement. and it helps enormously because now we have to put a lot of things back together that were sort of had to stop or diffuse over the two years. and we had plenty of things that were moving forward at the time when i had to suddenly stop. >> you found music when you were very young. >> yes, i did. >> or music found you. >> music found me. i apparently could sing before i could talk properly. >> rose: tell of that story.

it's amazing. >> my dad used to sing songs to me. and i apparently could remember the tunes and carry them, i'm told, long before i could speak coherently. which some people would say i still can't speak coherently but at least it got better. >> rose: but it was, i thought, perhaps they thought you had a speech impediment. >> i did have. and what-- and that was interesting because the doctor when my parents called a very remarkable pediatrician who had been my doctor since i was born, i was born prematurely. and my parents were very worried. and the doctor said there's nothing wrong with that baby, he's just little. and i don't want to hear one word from you until he's three years old, about how he's not keeping pace with the other kids. and of course, we saw what happened, it didn't matter. but people didn't know that then. but this doctor was very

perceptive. and when i was three, i used to walk by the piano and reach up and bang on it. and when my mother complained to the doctor about my speech impediment, the doctor said what's interested in. and mother said he bangs on the piano. he said piano lessons. and they started with the piano lessons and my speech impediment went away. >> rose: it's stunning, isn't it. >> yeah. >> rose: and you were on stage when you were ten, didn't you. >> i made my debut as a pianist with my hometown symphony when i was ten and i had already played piano recite els in the studio of my teacher before that. >> rose: but it is true, music found you. i mean you were there, this thing that would shape your life and bring you so much joy. >> i'm just one of these people who was able to do exactly what i was best cut out to do. and i mean who had the chance to do it. and i was lucky in every way,

charlie. the teachers i needed were there at the right time, the tants were there at the right time. i couldn't have had more good fortune. as a result, of course, i worked very, very hard because i felt i had to come up to the gift. and i think the spinal cord injury was as close as i ever felt to a real problem that has to be solved. and now two years later we're looking like the doctors and therapists think i can still improve quite a bit. because apparently the nerve regeneration is very, very slow. but it is clearly happening. >> rose: so how do you approach a year now? i mean we've just begun a new season here. how do you approach it? do you say my god, i'm going to choose those things that i'm so passionate about, that i so much want to do, that i so much want to share. >> well, it would be nice if

you could do that. and you do that to some degree. but i think basically what i have to do is i have to move slowly and steadily, increasing, balancing, styles of repertoire, things that the company needs, things that i need, which are usually the same. and just keeping us stimulated along the tracks we were on before i fell. and the-- and it's tricky because planning is done several years in advance. >> and so many people ask me how i chose these three opportunities. it wasn't really like that. it was one by one the ones i was supposed it to conduct, i didn't. because it wasn't-- i wasn't ready for conducting yet. and when i did, when we projected that we thought it would work, then the best-- the best choice and the best layout for me were these three pieces. and that's rather how we are

doing it. >> are they among your favorite. >> oh, always. >> that's what i thought. >> i never agree to conduct something that i'm not so closed to that i could say it was my favorite while it was going on. there's so much great music. there is no need to conduct something you don't feel the deepest affinity for. >> are you finding new things. >> always. >> are you really? >> from mozart, or are you finding-- or whoever it might be for you. are you finding new composers that-- from both. >> from new composers and but i do one thing which is a little bit different for some of my colleagues. a lot of my colleagues are in situations where the quantity of new music they can do is greater because if they are ahead of a symphony orchestra, the turnover is one new program every week. whereas at the met, i do three programs with my orchestra in a season because of all the operas and opera rehearsals. and that makes sense to me.

that's good. but when-- but and it's always been a kind of-- there was always much more great music that i felt close to than there would have been time with three lifetimes to do. and so i'm interested in doing some things i haven't done before. and i'm interested in repeating some things that i have done before that i need to do better. and there begins to be a small group of things that i think maybe i'll leave alone because i don't think i can do them better. or they're not a high enough priority. but. >> rose: there's nothing, i can't imagine this, but i'm going to ask it anyway. there's nothing you have wanted to do and you said to yourself, i'm not quite clear ready for that. >> i have done that often. >> rose: have you really? >> yeah. it's funny because i did some big projects when i was young but they were things i thought-- i learned something from one of my-- i told you, all of my great teachers just fell in my lap from the heaven like magic.

and george zell said to me, you should conduct certain piece, it was at that moment the moz ard g minor symphony. you won't really do it well until after you are 40 but do it now. >> rose: exactly. >> and i understood what he meant. he meant don't try to crack it for yourself new later on down the road. and i was that way with some pieces. and i was always a person, charlie, who i know what i know. but what i don't know is a closed book to me. i never was happy with superficial knowledge. and i could never just go and hear a performance and feel i was close to the piece at all without really looking at the score, really hearing the performances, really living with it for a while. >> rose: and to do that, are you deep into interpretation in terms of where the composer was at that moment, at that time and what was in his head? >> yes, i'm into all the things that it takes to try to get as close to what the

composer would want were he alive-- alive today. >> this is a pbs documentary, james levine american mice row in which young de-- maestro being conducted by george zell. >> and for-- every piece of music should start inside the player before he plays the first note. here's a one-man orchestra which, of course, makes things a little less complicated. ♪ ♪ ♪. >> out of long experience, i tell you, the shorter your downbeat will be, the more precise the attack your upbeat can be a little bigger than the downbeat, if you do one-- this, i mean, about an inch. if your cheeks start to tremble the moment you do this, then-- ♪ ♪ ♪ very good. >> rose: you've got more

handsome with age, mr. levine. >> thank you very much. if my cheeks start to tremble, then-- he was something else. >> rose: tell me what you meant to you, what he gave to you. >> he was a remarkable conductor, particularly of classic repertoire. and he built-- i mean he became music director of the cleveland orchestra in the middle 40s. and he was also conducting at the met. he conducted several seasons at the met. and i think in cleveland he had the opportunity to build a european style classical european organize tra in america with americans. and he was-- when i was a student, we used to go and hear all the visiting orchestras that came to carnegie hall.

but one orchestra my friends and i always had to go to all three of their concerts was cleveland. because it was always interpretively penetrating. and more and more marvelously played. and when i finished with july yard, i was taken in a competition to go to baltimore for some weeks to do a repertory project with the baltimore symphony with visiting conductors leading us, helping us. there were four of us. and zell came to the audition. and he liked what he saw well enough to tell me had a position opened on the conducting staff in cleveland. and he would love to audition me thoroughly and take me for it if it worked the way he thought it would. and for me this is exactly what i needed, as i say, always the right thing at the right moment. it was just what i didn't know anything about.

i didn't know how to deal with a single symphony orchestra as an entity the way i really did more know about operatic structure. and i went there and i was with him from 1964 until he died in 1971. and i think it was 1971. it may have been 1970. i lose it now. but i think during that time i observed him, i asked him many questions. we spent many sessions together going over music that was related to music that he was doing but not always the same music. and he recommended me for some of the first professional work that i got. in fact i date my professional conducting to 50 years next year in 2014. because it was 1964 when i

started in cleveland. >> rose: was there moments that you knew you wanted to conduct? >> oh, yes, there was. it was in 1956. i spent a summer at the marlboro festival. and my general music teacher, i mean not piano teacher but music theory pepper-- repertoire style walter levine, the first violinist of a string quarter at the time,-- quartet, he called and asked if he would take me. and sglurkim was only skeptical because i was 13, and he took me. and in marlboro there was not yet the concert hall there is now. we used to have concerts in the hall that was the dining hall and where they converted into a concert hall after lunch. and i learned so much there about ensemble and making music with other people that from then on the idea of just developing as a solo

pianist went away for me. and i had to make music with other people, all kinds. chamber pieces, songs. and little by little i got the bug about doing sim fon eck and oratorio and operatic repertoire. there was only one person there who was a coach conducter to assist on cozivonduta, that was the opera they were doing that summer. they asked me if i would put the meano together and do a backstage chorus. i did. and i got bitten by the opera conducting bug then. >> rose: and what a lifetime it's given you. >> hasn't it. >> rose: yeah. this year, how would you describe what you are going to do this year. >> well, we're going to do a new production which we haven't done in many, many years. >> rose: 50 years. >> that's right. and i've done a good number of the revivals of that production that was the only one in my time. >> rose: you have described it as the creme de la creme.

>> yes. >> rose: why is that? what is it about it. >> let's put it this way. if you take all of the great operatic comedies, the real great ones, if you take figero and johnny skeki and the done pascale and eli zeer, and you take all the human comedies, with or above the best of them is falstaff, falstaff is just a miracle of libretto, of story line, of musical inspiration, of master, mastery of every detail of composition. it's in a class of figero a&m istro singer which are the other two that are near perfect. i don't need them to be perfect. i love a lot of pieces that aren't perfect. those are just the creme de la creme of operatic comedy.

which is striking because 80% of operatic repertoire is grandios, tragic, melodramatic, you know, somebody dies. in these pieces the human beings get wiser and through a lot of circumstances which they play seriously but we find very funny. >> rose: who else has been instrumental in terms of helping you appreciate a, the music, and b being instructed to you, mentored to you, or in opening distance to you. who are the men and women who have been there that have helped you understand all the limitless potential of music. >> boy, it's a long list, charlie. and it is, it's a long list of official teachers, like george zell who was my ten tore there, wolf pang picano who broke up the idea of having an assistant in the opera workshop in aspen and

had me conduct the last performance of whatever opera we were doing, starting in 1962. i did that when i was 19. and i had from the time i was 10 or 11 i had walter levine, first violinist of the lasalle quartet for all the musical, for everything, for theory, harmony, repertoire, for style, he even coached me on the instrument playing chamber music for his students t was an unbelievable education, starting-- it was the kind that one goes to college for but i was 11 when i started it. and then i went for example, to marlboro. and there was rudolph and claude frank and theres what a whole community of brilliant teaching musicians. and then i went to aspen to study with rossin a la vine because she was the most dynamic teacher of the instrument at the time.

and she was very well-known for working on technique. but she took me knowing full well that i was trying to use the piano as a tool for conducting mostly. and i didn't know how much i wanted to perform on the piano. turned out i did want to, and did do quite a-- quite a lot more than i pictured when i started. but she was-- she was very willing to start with me when i was 14, the year after i was with zurkin. and in aspen every year were-- well, first of all darius mio, the great mio who was the head of the composition faculty, he brought contemporary composers with him every summer. so one had a chance to talk with them and hear their musk and work on their music. just, for example. i conducted albert harring in front of its composer

benjamin britain while i was there. i think of that now because we're doing a beautiful revival of midsummer night's dream at the met at the moment. and it's-- but i think one after the other, it perhaps can be seen better if i say whenever i conduct a french piece or play a french piece, behind me are john morell, my teacher at july yard, a very french and brilliant conducter. jenny turrell who i studied with and played concerts with for years, regine cespa likewise, pierre bulen when i started in cleveland he started conducting in cleveland and he worked with me on a lot of his music and school music that i needed to learn. and manual rosenthal came to the met and conducted our french triple bill and he

was literally connected, i mean he was a ravel protege. the point is all of this flowthrough which i always tried very hard to get, because i just felt we were getting further and further away from the composers, and when the pieces were written. and i didn't want that to happen to me. >> rose: when you stand there or sit there, you sit or stand on the shoulders of giants. >> that's absolutely right. >> rose: who have helped you understand the music. >> this is what makes it so critical to me to try to help the next people. >> rose: so you can give them everything that's been given to you. >> absolutely. as much as possible. >> rose: do you see extraordinary tamm ent out there. >> oh, yes, without any doubt. i see individually i see plenty of talent. the phases change and the priorities change. and there are institutional and structural crises. but the talent keeps coming, thank god. >> rose: do you worry about

orchestra and do you worry about opera, and do you worry about its future. >> sure. but my worry is-- what can i say. we've always worried. >> yeah. >> rose: but are the times more challenging today. on the one hand you have -- >> absolutely they are. >> rose: and why is that? >> oh, lordy. why is that. good question, charlie. it depends on which part of it we're going to examine. perhaps the most, the easiest way to start examining it is to say imagine that you were a singer or a conductor or an instrumentalist who was 30 or 40 or 20 or 50 years old when the premier of the last verdi operas came, and verdi died in 1901.

now there were people who heard him, people who studied with him, people who studied with the generation of the people who sang the premiers. and little by little there were two world wars. there was the jet plane flying people around where their brains could go but their bodies couldn't go that fast. and there was some problem with that. and gradually the teachers thinned out. and so it wasn't-- i mean it was bound generationally to become diffused. and at the moment, if you go to the opera, the best performances you hear are likely to be of relatively contemporary operas or new wish operas, and of relatively old ones. baroque ones, moz ard, that sort of thing. that's because the old ones have gotten old enough that

we can reinvent the way we do them without it worrying people. and the new ones, because we're close enough to the substance of them. >> rose: sure. >> but that large output of 19th century that kept the big operahouses hot when i was growing up and before, we can't do anything like that density of that repertoire nowadays, just because of the quantity of the kind of singer it needs. they come along but they don't have the same-- it's one thing to come along and be able to hear it on the radio and in your operahouse left and right of you. it's another thing when there's only one or two others of that quality spread around the whole world. and it's hard for them to last as long because of the burden. some of them do remarkably with all of that, that

responsibility. but it's of-- there are times we worry about that. >> rose: i assume you would do it exactly the way you did it. >> well, i don't suppose i would be able to change it much. but i would do it-- let's just say if i had it to do over again, i might change a detail that i know now more about than i did then. but the basic guts of it, i wouldn't change at all. i think we did as good a job and had as good judgement as it was possible to have. >> rose: but i mean would you have composed more. >> no. >> rose: nothing, none of that kind of thing. >> i didn't have-- i wasn't a talented composer. i was a dutiful composer because i wanted to learn about it. >> but i was re-creative musician, not a creative one. and fortunately, i mean, i never got confused about that. what i go around trying to do is page sure that conductors don't get delusions of grandeur about

who wrote the piece. >> rose: if i look at you and i look at so many of the-- and we know many of the names of the great conductors, whether symphony, orchestra-- i mean symphony or opera or other things, would there be a common link among the great ones? >> the great ones are functioning in a certain realm. they are functioning with great understanding of its way the music is put together. they're functioning with a high energy and a high desire to communicate what they find in these masterpieces to an audience of listeners. they are perceptive and skillful on various levels, in communicating with an organize tra -- orchestra and getting the orchestra after all who are playing the instruments. the conduct certificate just waiving a stick. to get them to be as

committed as they can, and as they would be on their own. and get all this communicated to the public. this all great conductors have in common, i think. then many other things are a matter of degree. >> so there's a violence, an excitement, a togetherness, a focus that is absolutely not beaten in any other piece written before or after. and burn the e flat as best you can. and one. ♪ hold it, burn it, yes. >> yes. rip off. ♪ ♪ burn it out, rip it off. >> rose: when it's a perfect storm for a piece and your orchestra and you, i mean does it somehow go up, do you feel like i realize i'm in a zone.

i realize something is happening this evening. >> that's a very good question. i tell you what happens. music is not an art form that deals really with the concept of perfection. you have hundreds of people in an opera performance singing and playing for hours. and somebody's lip slips or somebody's fingers. an accident happens. that is not of any consequence. but you can feel it unmistakeably if you have a large group or small, if the piece is small, grup of highly talentsed and really dedicated artists, who really worked on the piece, and who understand the technique of rehearsing and then releasing. you can feel in that zone, more frequently than i ever thought possible. it doesn't mean you think the performance can't be

made better. it's just that you know you're in the realm where the composer would say good job, that's my piece. >> rose: you just explained to me something i didn't understand about music. what could happen, what could go wrong. i understand sports more than a understand muss eck. and i can understand how you might throw the ball a little bit further than you wanted to and therefore it's an interception rather than a completed pass. i understand, you know, in golf if you are your hands don't come down. but it's the same in music. >> i can tell you when i come to the end of a met season, for the last three weeks or so, i can feel the audience is applauding not just for the performance they're at, but they're saying thanks for all the high points in this terrific season. they're saying, your batting average is high. and that for a music director and for a conductor who, i mean, i have to be so exposed in this city in

order to have-- to make use of the situation we is had to keep making our results better. and the public understood this continuously and the interaction with them is so beautiful. and i think it's-- i don't think-- it's not possible in art for everybody to like everything. but it is possible for them to understand what it takes to do it. and that if it was so easy any idiot could do it lying down. >> rose: exactly right. you expect a level of high performance. >> you know, charlie, i'm sorry to interrupt. there is another example that comes up to me all the time. what do you look for in a singer, people say to me. i say i look for the best in that singer. that individual singer. but when singers audition, i beg them if they're going to audition. come out on stage, do your

thing. and don't spend a moment on whether or not you get this job or not. you have no idea what the people who are listening are looking for. you have no idea what their criteria are and what their conception of the part may be. and you may sing marvelously and they give the part to somebody who's a different element or a different, who knows. or you may have a not particularly good day and be exactly what they were looking for. and this is, you can't get out there and audition for human being every time you have to audition for a job. >> rose: you can't get their expectations. >> no. but that's just-- that just san example of what you are saying, that there is a kind of ultimate of what one wants to hear is a singer clearly fujsing with what they've got. and what you don't want is somebody trying to make-- to

make up for something that isn't there. i always beg young singers not to audition too soon. not to audition when they may have something that, within a year or two could be so easily remedied, and then when they audition, no one would be able to tell what they had had forever and what they had only learned in the last two years. >> rose: you understand this more than almost anybody. i mean give us the sense of what you have learned about singing, and what you have learned about singers. >> lordy. you ask good corkers. that is always like walking on shifting ground. because it's a signs only to a certain point. and then it's an art. but at least we do know enough about it to be able

to use people who do it well as models and demonstrators for people who need to learn to do it well. and there are still some really good coaches and teachers. not perhaps as numerous as there were at one time. but they-- they come along because the kind of singer who's in demand also changes with the time. now, for example,, well, just consider, when i was a kid it literally didn't matter at all whether a singer looked plausible in a role at all if that singer could sing the spots off it. >> rose: yeah. >> and i am not sure that an audience today has that same conditioning. i think an audience-- i remember-- i remember a great letter that came.

we used to do full length performances of operas for students, for kids. and now we do it differently. we do specially formatted things. but a hundred years ago when i was just starting, we did a performance of aita for young-- aida for young kids and their teacher had them write letters to me after. and one kid wrote, he thought that considering that the girl who sang the title role of aida didn't really look so beautiful, it would have been good if she had sung more beautifully. >> rose: yeah. >> an i thought out of the mouths of babes. you see, that's the thing. it is the combination, if somebody comes on stage and doesn't look like your glamorous idea of aida but

when she opens her mouse, oh, wow, she can sing and phrase, you don't know what she looks like any more. >> rose: you see what you imagine her to look like in your eyes because you hear the voice which is so-- and. >> and opera drama, don't forget, no matter what is never going to be repertory theatre drama bus it is sung and goes across the pit and the emotions are a certain size. and operatic acting is somewhat different from ensemble theatre acting. but you sure do know it when you've got it. >> rose: so does a city in new york have more than one opera company? >> does what. >> rose: does a city like new york have more than one opera company. >> absolutely. >> rose: sad, isn't it? >> terrible. the saddest. desperate. >> rose: it really is a tragedy that you don't. >> and i mean, a company that people who are still alive, julius rudel put his life blood in that company for all that time. and it out-- he outlives it,

i mean that is unthinkable, insane. >> when you look at peter gell and you, i mean is there in some way, can you argue that this is a perfect match because of differences, they compliment each other, hear you an hear pert, what do you say about, you know, the director of an operahouse, and the driving force, musically of an operahouse. what need be between them, to create great art. >> charlie, all i can say to you is when-- with peter, when it works, it really works. and i mean, between us, and we're on a track now that i

think continues, i mean it was so important, i mean what peter thought of this is critical-- crystal clear. if he had been a different kind of general manager, a different kind of man, he would have said well, we don't know when jim will be back or if he'll be back. i have to move on. >> rose: exactly. >> but he found a way to keep the company protected enough and to keep the option open that if i came back, let alone came back inological good form, that i could continue. and i can assure you, day after day, that wasn't so easy to do. and the company had to absorb a lot of shock and he had to. but i am-- i can only say if we are dealing with a man-made of that who then when i come back and

i'm-- he's just delighted that it is more than he ever thought it could possibly be after an injury like that, and we're getting along marvelously. i think-- and i work with an awful lot of general managers, all different styles at different times. and opera always has difficulties of various seriousness. and but i think pet certificate so determined to solve the crises that occur in his time and he's so intelligent about it that i am-- and god knows for the metropolitan opera i will always give anything i can, that's just where i made a life commitment. you don't just do that as

something internal, it is just, i guess it's like marriage. >> and in the end your legacy there will be, you think. >> what i do think it will be? >> well, it's very hard to think of performances in terms of legacy. because performances are ef necessary ent. -- evanescent but if one wants to look over the period that i have been up to now, we brought a lot of operas into the repertoire that are great operas that haven't been there before. we-- we launched and worked successfully a young artist development program which now has people holding up their art form all around the world. and we-- we nurtured a lot of our own artists as well as continuing always to try to bring the best from other places. and we brought the quality of our night to night

performance at its best up to a higher and higher level. and i think we have initiatives now which will perhaps yield us more new works. but i always-- i am-- if you ask me do i think we do enough new works, no, i don't. but i don't agree with the people who measure what we do by that. because gatti kozotzel was there for years an de new operas, american operas, he was determined. and he did them and they were gone. and i-- it's very important to me that this business of working new pieces doesn't become like hit and run, like, you know, i feel very

uncomfortable when i spend a lot of time studying, rehearsing a piece and i really see what it has. and then it's gone. and for example at our concert on sunday, we played elliott carter's variations, written 1954-'55. elliott just passed away a year ago. and i-- i have played that piece with our orchestra, the met orchestra, i mean an orchestra that plays opera all the time. we've played that three times in our concert series, which means that any one who doesn't want to hear it doesn't have to go. but people who do want to hear it, can count on there being a way to hear it again. and that's desperately important to me. i just, i'm not very interested in the quantity i'm interested in the quantity and the memory and the depth of the experience.

>> that's the most interesting answer. i have heard. some people will say everything he did was great but did he do enough of this. and you know that criticism, that's a response to. >> it is. i was once told the met should do a new opera ever every-- every year. and my response was i wish i really thought there was a new opera good enough for the met every year. and that makes it sound as though i'm putting the composers down. i'm not, it's not that at all it is just for something to succeed at the met, it has to be studied. it has to be rehearsed. it has to be cast. it has to be digested. it can't just be crammed like people do for an exam and then they don't remember anything about it again. that, that syndrome is really bad, i think, i don't think that's helping any. whereas if you look over the last years, what we've done that hadn't been played at the met before, you'll

see-- you'll see some brand-new works. and you'll see some recent works. but you'll also see rossina's arguably rossina's greatest comedy which had never been played before. the two opresaria of mozart which we now play and play. we now have the 7 great mozart operas. and years ago there were only three. a lot of verde that wasn't there before. there was no handle at all. 1984 was the first handle opera in the met. 8-- handl opera at the met. there is stravinsky and there have been new works of-- by a lot of composers which i hope in some cases will stick around and be revived. >> the question of legacy, one who knows little about music but understands a few things, it seems to me the legacy is as people say first do no harm.

you come to a place and dow no harm. and second is you leave it better than you found it. >> yes, absolutely. >> and it's the idea, as i talk to corporate people that have done something, as steve jobs say, it's not an individual product, it is a culture, it is a company, it is a place where they were in a sense. >> yeah. >> true to the idea. >> and i think it's just what you're saying. that it has to do with all of the things we did that raises our night to night standard. and the variety of our repertoire and the opportunities for operatic artists across-the-board. and i often say to people if you give me a list of works you would like to have seen us do in the last 40 years, you will remember for each

one you give me, you'll have to strike off one that we did. >> rose: so many people are happy to see you back, including me. >> i can feel that it makes it-- makes it possible to do it. >> rose: thank you for coming. >> thank you, charlie. a pleasure. >> rose: james levine for the hour, thank you for joining us. see you next time. for more on this program and earlier episodes visit us on-line at pbs.org and charlierose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

>> funding for charlie rose has been provided by the coca-cola company, supporting this program since 20023. american express, and charles schwab. additional funding provided by-- , and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. >> you're watching pbs

this is "nightly business report" with tyler mathisen and susie gharib. >> the great divide, when will the federal reserve start hiking interest rates? that question is intensifying a debate and grabbing the attention of investors, wall street and main street. >> turning point, target cuts the profit forecast as it tries to win back customers and increase sales but there may be a glimmer of hope in the latest earnings report. >> and subprime trouble, is a bubble brewing in one of the hottest segments of the economy? we'll have that and more tonight for wednesday, august 20th. good evening, everyone, and welcome. thanks for joining us. great rate debate intensified today. some of the p