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Jonathan Levi | |
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| Born | 1955 (age 68–69) New York City, U.S. |
| Occupation | Writer and Producer |
| Alma mater | Yale University Clare College, Cambridge University |
Jonathan Levi (born 1955, in New York City) is an American writer and producer.
Following graduation from Yale University in 1977, Levi received a Mellon Fellowship to study at Clare College, Cambridge, where he revived the literary magazine Granta with Bill Buford and Pete de Bolla, and served as U.S. Editor until 1987.
After leaving Granta, Levi created the program "New Opera for New Ears" for the Metropolitan Opera Guild, producing Carly Simon's opera, Romulus Hunt (1991), directed by Francesca Zambello at the Metropolitan Opera Guild and the Kennedy Center.
Levi’s 1992, A Guide for the Perplexed is a novel in the form of a traveler’s guide in the form of letters to a mysterious, seemingly ubiquitous travel agent named Benjamin from two stranded but eventually satisfied customers, and was called "a fable of fantastical lushness, reminiscent of the best fairy tales" by the New York Times. [1] His short stories and articles have appeared in many magazines including The International Herald Tribune, "Condé Nast Traveler", "GQ". Levi's The Lori Berenson Papers, written with Peruvian journalist Liz Mineo for The Nation (September 4, 2000) was attacked by Berenson's lawyer, former Attorney General Ramsey Clark. [2] From 1996 to 2001, Levi served as the Fiction Critic for the Los Angeles Times Book Review.
In 1997 Levi commissioned Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky and Director Robert Scanlan and produced an adaptation of Pinsky's translation of Dante’s Inferno with actors Bill Camp, Reg E. Cathey, Jack Willis and Leslie Beatty, with violinist Gil Morgenstern playing an original score written by Bruce Saylor. [3] After premiering in New York, the production toured the United States including performances at Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and The Getty Center in Los Angeles.
In 2000 Harold O. Levy, the New York City Schools Chancellor, invited Levi to oversee Arts and Cultural Affairs, where he initiated a variety of programs to reinvigorate the arts, including a master class for School Superintendents with violinist Isaac Stern. [4] In association with the Robin Hood Foundation, Levi initiated the Library Project to re-imagine and re-design the 600 elementary school libraries in New York City. [5]
In 2002, Levi became the first director of the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, designed by Frank Gehry, and created the SummerScape Festival, where his premieres included work by Russian director Kama Ginkas, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Ballet Hispanico, and Elvis Costello. [6]
In 2001 Levi’s first opera, The Scrimshaw Violin, held its world premiere, with music by Bruce Saylor. It was the first project of the Nine Circles Chamber Theatre, which Levi founded with violinist Gil Morgenstern. [7] Levi subsequently wrote two more operas for Nine Circles with composer Mel Marvin. Guest from the Future (2004), about the legendary 1945 meeting in Leningrad of poet Anna Akhmatova and philosopher Isaiah Berlin, premiered at the SummerScape Festival, directed by David Chambers. [8] Buwalsky: A Road Opera, based on an unfilmed scenario by Irma Achten, was commissioned by the Dutch Opera Spanga and directed by Corina van Eijk. [9] Opera Spanga also commissioned Levi's Stuyvesant Zero with music by Dutch composer Caroline Ansink, which premiered on August 22, 2012. [10]
Levi's 2009 drama Falling Bodies, with music by Bruce Saylor, imagines a meeting between Galileo Galilei and Primo Levi and premiered at the Rustaveli National Theatre in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Levi's latest novel, Septimania, released in April, 2016 by Overlook Press, follows a shy young organ tuner who falls in love with a mysterious math genius, Louiza, only to find she has disappeared. While trying to find her, he discovers he is the heir to the Kingdom of Septimania, given by Charlemagne to the Jews in the 8th century. Over the next 50 years, Malory’s search for Louiza leads to encounters with Aldo Moro, Pope John Paul II, a band of lost Romanians, a magical Bernini statue, Haroun Al-Rashid of Arabian Nights fame and an elephant that changes color, a shadowy U.S. spy agency and one of the 9/11 hijackers, an appleseed from the original Tree of Knowledge and the secret history of Isaac Newton and his discovery of a Grand Unified Theory that explains everything. But most of all, Septimania is the quest of a Candide for love and knowledge, and the ultimate discovery that they may be unified after all. Jen Baker at Booklist gave Septimania a starred review, calling it "a literary dream of a book" and "a storyteller's work of magic, and a fantastically suspenseful adventure" and compares it to Michael Chabon and Jonathan Franzen. [11] Kirkus Reviews calls Septimania a "thoroughly intellectual postmodern fable, wise yet melancholy, meant to be read slowly and savored." [12] In a recent Publishers Weekly review, Septimania was described as "highly intelligent, insanely ambitious, and restlessly imaginative." [13]
Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller CBE was an English theatre and opera director, actor, author, television presenter, humourist and physician. After training in medicine and specialising in neurology in the late 1950s, he came to prominence in the early 1960s in the comedy revue Beyond the Fringe with Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett.
Julie Taymor is an American director and writer of theater, opera, and film. Her stage adaptation of The Lion King debuted in 1997 and received eleven Tony Award nominations, with Taymor receiving Tony Awards for her direction and costume design. Her 2002 film Frida, about Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, was nominated for five Academy Awards, including a Best Original Song nomination for Taymor's composition "Burn It Blue." She also directed the 2007 jukebox musical film Across the Universe, based on the music of the Beatles.
Robert Pinsky is an American poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator. He was the first United States Poet Laureate to serve three terms. Recognized worldwide, Pinsky's work has earned numerous accolades. Pinsky is a professor of English and creative writing in the graduate writing program at Boston University. In 2015 the university named him a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor, the highest honor bestowed on senior faculty members who are actively involved in teaching, research, scholarship, and university civic life.
Henry Louis Reginald De Koven was an American music critic and prolific composer, particularly of comic operas.
Rupert Holmes is a British-American composer, singer-songwriter, dramatist and author. He is widely known for the hit singles "Escape " (1979) and "Him" (1980). He is also known for his musicals The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which earned him two Tony Awards, and Curtains, and for his television series Remember WENN.
Nilo Cruz is a Cuban-American playwright and pedagogue. With his award of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Anna in the Tropics, he became the second Latino so honored, after Nicholas Dante.
Martin Charnin was an American lyricist, writer, and theatre director. Charnin's best-known work is as conceiver, director, and lyricist of the musical Annie.
Douglas J. Cuomo is an American composer of contemporary classical music and music for television.
The King's Head Theatre, founded in 1970 by Dan Crawford, is an off-West End venue in London. It is the oldest operating pub theatre in the UK. In 2021, Mark Ravenhill became Artistic Director and the theatre focusses on producing LGBTQ+ work, work that is joyful, irreverent, colourful and queer.
Euan Douglas George Morton is a Scottish actor and singer. He is best known for his role as Boy George in the musical Taboo, receiving nominations for the Laurence Olivier Award and Tony Award for his performance. He played the role of King George in the musical Hamilton on Broadway from July 2017 to 10 September 2023.
Enda Walsh is an Irish playwright.
Ballet Fantastique is an Emmy®-nominated American ballet theater company based in Eugene, Oregon in the Pacific Northwest, USA. Ballet Fantastique creates and performs all-original dance theater repertoire and immersive audience experiences. Ballet Fantastique became a resident company at Eugene's Hult Center for the Performing Arts in 2014 and tours across the US and internationally.
Casey Nicholaw is an American theatre director, choreographer, and performer. He has been nominated for several Tony Awards for his work directing and choreographing The Drowsy Chaperone (2006), The Book of Mormon (2011), Aladdin (2014), Something Rotten! (2015), Mean Girls (2018), The Prom (2019), and Some Like It Hot (2023) and for choreographing Monty Python's Spamalot (2005), winning for his co-direction of The Book of Mormon with Trey Parker and his choreography of Some Like It Hot. He also was nominated for the Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Direction and Choreography for The Drowsy Chaperone (2006) and Something Rotten! (2015) and for Outstanding Choreography for Spamalot (2005).
Matthew Glass is the pseudonym of an Australian-born author and doctor who is living and working in Britain.
Bruce Saylor is an American composer.
West of Memphis is a 2012 New Zealand-American documentary film about the West Memphis Three that was directed and co-written by Amy Berg, and produced by Berg, Fran Walsh and Peter Jackson, and Damien Echols and his wife, Lorri Davis. It was released in the US by Sony Pictures Classics to critical acclaim, and received a nomination for Best Documentary Screenplay from the Writers Guild of America.
Gil Morgenstern is an American concert violinist, soloist, artistic director, and educator, also known for his interdisciplinary work through the Gil Morgenstern Reflections Series International concerts.
Phelim McDermott is an English actor and stage director. He has directed plays and operas in Britain, Germany, Spain, the United States, and Australia. McDermott was a co-founder of the Improbable theatre in 1996.
Teva Harrison was a Canadian-American writer and graphic artist. She was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer at age 37, and began to document her experiences with the terminal illness using illustrations and essays. Her works were compiled into a graphic memoir called In-Between Days. The book was a finalist for the 2016 Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction, and put Harrison on the list of 16 Torontonians to Watch. Harrison won the 2016 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, and was a finalist for the 2017 Joe Shuster Award for Cartoonist/Auteur.
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