Mature Career
During his freelance career, Kleiber restricted his conducting appearances to a select number of occasions. He made his British debut in 1966 with a performance at the Edinburgh Festival of Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck, a work his father had conducted at its premiere in 1925. He made his Bayreuth debut in 1974 with a performance of Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.
His American debut came in 1978 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where he again conducted in 1983, his only US orchestra appearances. His New York Metropolitan Opera debut was in 1988, conducting Giacomo Puccini's La bohème with Luciano Pavarotti and Mirella Freni. In 1989, following Herbert von Karajan's resignation from the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Kleiber was offered, and declined, the post of the orchestra's next music director. Kleiber returned to the Met in 1989 to conduct La traviata, and in 1990 for Otello and Der Rosenkavalier.
Kleiber kept out of the public eye and reportedly never gave an interview. After he resigned from the Bavarian State Opera, his appearances became less frequent, and he made only a few recordings. Most of these are regarded as very fine; his versions of Ludwig van Beethoven's fifth and seventh symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and of Beethoven's Symphonies Nos. 4, 6 and 7 with the Bavarian State Orchestra are particularly distinguished. Other notable recordings include Johannes Brahms' Symphony No. 4 and Franz Schubert's third and eighth ("Unfinished") symphonies, also with the Vienna Philharmonic, recordings of Dvořák's Concerto for piano and orchestra with Sviatoslav Richter, Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz, Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus, Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata and Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.
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