As of 2006, Chicago will have to get used to sharing James Conlon with Los Angeles. The American conductor, who next summer will take over as music director of the Ravinia Festival, will become music director of the Los Angeles Opera in July 2006, on a three-year contract. He will conduct four or five productions a season with the company and reside there for as many months annually. He succeeds Kent Nagano, who is leaving to become artistic chief of the Montreal Symphony.
Conlon, 54, has been mentioned as a possible candidate to succeed both Daniel Barenboim as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and James Levine in the same position at the Metropolitan Opera.
Although the Los Angeles appointment would appear to weaken his chances of being named to either post, it would be unwise to rule him out. For a period in the 1990s, Conlon was serving as principal conductor of both the Paris National Opera and Rotterdam Philharmonic, as well as general music director of the city of Cologne, Germany, and music director of the Cincinnati May Festival, a post he still holds.
