page_title: Zubin Mehta
section_title: 1990s
hierarchical_section_title: Zubin Mehta / Conducting career / 1990s
caption_attribution_description: English: Zubin Mehta conducting the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra at the Jamshed Bhabha Theatre(NCPA) in Mumbai. A series of concerts were held to mark the centenary of Mehli Mehta, Zubin's father.
context_page_description: Zubin Mehta is an Indian conductor of Western and Eastern classical music. He is music director emeritus of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor emeritus of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
  Mehta's father was the founder of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra, and Mehta received his early musical education from him. When he was 18, he enrolled in the Vienna state music academy, from which he graduated after three years with a diploma as a conductor. He began winning international competitions and conducted the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic at age 21. Beginning in the 1960s, Mehta gained experience by substituting for celebrated maestros throughout the world.
  Mehta was music director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra from 1961 to 1967 and of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1962 to 1978, the youngest music director ever for any major North American orchestra. In 1969, he was appointed Music Adviser to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and in 1981 he became its Music Director for Life. From 1978 to 1991, Mehta was music director of the New York Philharmonic. Since 1985, he has also been chief conductor of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence, Italy.
context_section_description: In 1998 he went to Munich where he began directing the Bavarian State Opera, because, he said, it provided "another panorama for me, to be involved in the running of an opera house".
  In 1990, he conducted the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Orchestra del Teatro dell'Opera di Roma in the first ever Three Tenors concert in Rome, joining the tenors again in 1994 at the Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles. In between those appearances, he conducted the historic 1992 production of Tosca in which each act took place in the actual setting and at the actual time specified in the score. This production starred Catherine Malfitano in the title role, Plácido Domingo as Cavaradossi and Ruggero Raimondi as Baron Scarpia. Act I was telecast live from Rome's Basilica of Sant'Andrea della Valle on Saturday, 11 July, at noon (Central European Daylight Saving Time); act II was telecast later that evening from the Palazzo Farnese at 9:40 p.m.; act III was telecast live on Sunday, 12 July, at 7:00 am from the Castel Sant'Angelo, also known as Hadrian's Tomb.
  In June 1994, Mehta performed the Mozart Requiem with the members of the Sarajevo Symphony Orchestra and Chorus at the ruins of Sarajevo's National Library, in a fundraising concert for the victims of armed conflict and remembrance of the thousands of people killed in the Yugoslav Wars. On 29 August 1999, he conducted Mahler's Symphony No. 2 (Resurrection), at the vicinity of Buchenwald concentration camp in Weimar, with the Bavarian State Orchestra and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra sitting alongside each other.
  He toured India (Mumbai) in 1984 with the New York Philharmonic, and again in November–December 1994 with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, along with soloists Itzhak Perlman and Gil Shaham. In 1997 and 1998, Mehta worked in collaboration with Chinese film director Zhang Yimou on a production of Giacomo Puccini's opera Turandot, which they took to Florence and to Beijing, where it was staged in its actual surroundings in the Forbidden City, with over 300 extras and 300 soldiers, for nine historic performances. The making of this production was chronicled in the documentary The Turandot Project, which Mehta narrated.
caption: Mehta conducting the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in Mumbai, October 2008
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