LEVI, HERMANN (1839-1900), German orchestral conductor, was born at Giessen on the 7th of November 1839, and was the son of a Jewish rabbi. He was educated at Giessen and Mannheim, and came under Vincenz Lachner's notice. From 1855 to 1858 Levi studied at the Leipzig conservatorium, and after a series of travels which took him to Paris, he obtained his first post as music director at Saarbrücken, which post he exchanged for that at Mannheim in 1861. From 1862 to 1864 he was chief conductor of the German opera in Rotterdam, then till 1872 at Carlsruhe, when he went to Munich, a post he held until 1896, when ill-health compelled him to resign. Levi's name is indissolubly connected with the increased public appreciation of Wagner's music. He conducted the first performance of _Parsifal_ at Bayreuth in 1882, and was connected with the musical life of that place during the remainder of his career. He visited London in 1895.
LEVI, LEONE (1821-1888), English jurist and statistician, was born of Jewish parents on the 6th of June 1821, at Ancona, Italy. After receiving an early training in a business house in his native town, he went to Liverpool in 1844, became naturalized, and changing his faith, joined the Presbyterian church. Perceiving the necessity, in view of the unsystematic condition of the English law on the subject, for the establishment of chambers and tribunals of commerce in England, he warmly advocated their institution in numerous pamphlets; and as a result of his labours the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, of which Levi was made secretary, was founded in 1849. In 1850 Levi published his _Commercial Law of the World_, being an exhaustive and comparative treatise upon the laws and codes of mercantile countries. Appointed in 1852 to the chair of commercial law in King's College, London, he proved himself a highly competent and popular instructor, and his evening classes were a most successful innovation. He was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1859, and received from the university of Tübingen the degree of doctor of political science. His chief work--_History of British Commerce and of the Economic Progress of the British Nation_, 1763-1870, is perhaps a rather too partisan account of British economic development, being a eulogy upon the blessings of Free Trade, but its value as a work of reference cannot be gainsaid. Among his other works are: _Work and Pay_; _Wages and Earnings of the Working Classes_; _International Law, with Materials for a Code_. He died on the 7th of May 1888.