Letters: Feb. 7, 1983

Met's Levine

To the Editors:

To those of us for whom life without opera is unthinkable, your perceptive story on Maestro James Levine [Jan. 17] was welcome. Bravo for your recognition of a brilliant artist.

David C. Titus

Sea Island, Ga.

The greatest of maestros should have proved himself in symphonic music as well as in opera. Levine has not done that. Sir Georg Solti has. If you compare their respective recordings of Mozart's Don Giovanni, you will discern how superior Solti's conducting is.

Annabelle Farmelant

New York City

Your story encourages a type of star system in classical music that is deplorable. I could run a season of professional opera on one-tenth of Levine's salary. As long as there is a Met, opera will remain an oddity, suited to a museum.

Henry Rosack, Music Director

San Mateo Symphony

Palo Alto, Calif.

Regarding your description of the Met as the "General Motors of the world's opera companies," we in the West know that it is the San Francisco Opera that is the Rolls-Royce.

C. Richard Ogden

San Francisco

The Met is now a more exciting, more dynamic and richer place under Levine's direction.

Hannah C. Parfitt

Lynn, Mass.

Begin's Settlements

Begin and his settlers should beware of their scheme to control the West Bank through colonization [Jan. 17]. The British tried similar tactics when they imported Scotsmen to Northern Ireland during the early 17th century. The descendants of those settlers have achieved dubious results as we see in Ulster today. Begin's settlement policy may be creating an evil that will curse the area for generations to come.

Robert Webster

Levant, Me.

By quoting Genesis 17:8, one of countless biblical passages in which God promises the land of Israel to the Jewish people in perpetuity, you puzzle both Christian and Jewish readers [Jan. 17]. How can you quote the Bible and yet scoff at the Israelis for wishing to fulfill God's pledge to them by building settlements throughout the land?

Manfred R. Lehmann

New York City

The quote from Genesis implies that the Jews are the only descendants of Abraham. Abraham's eldest son was Ishmael, which makes the Arabs his descendants also. The kinship between the Jews and the Arabs, not the animosity, is what should be stressed.

Les Gruber

Mount Pleasant, Mich.

Like most Americans, I loathe any form or expression of bigotry, but I resolutely refuse to defend the modern statesman whose political philosophy is based on the alleged pronouncements of an ancient tribal god.

Del Johnson

Port Chester, N. Y.

If Israel has the funds for a major war, the occupation of Lebanon and the colonization of the West Bank, why does it need so much U.S. aid?

G. Robert DeLong

Weston, Mass.

You write that in 1948 "the Jews of Palestine seized control of part of the ancient land of their forefathers and established the state of Israel." In fact, the state of Israel was created in 1948, after the United Nations agreed to the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state.

Anne Pernick