Conductor
29 April 1936, Bombay (now Mumbai), India
Zubin Mehta’s 1962 Salzburg debut with a 26-year-old’s fearlessness and the Vienna Philharmonic’s full weight behind him opened a Festival relationship that ran for decades. He is among the conductors who helped make the Salzburg Festival genuinely global.
Mehta came to Salzburg in 1962 as a rising conductor who had already won the Liverpool International Conducting Competition in 1958 and been appointed Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. His debut with the Vienna Philharmonic was a full orchestral programme rather than an opera, a bold choice that showed confidence in the symphonic repertoire at a Festival then still centred on opera. The audience heard a conductor of precision and warmth, and the Festival invited him back. He led the Vienna Philharmonic again in 1965 and the Berlin Philharmonic in 1968, building a presence across both of the orchestras central to Salzburg’s identity.
His Salzburg appearances were built on his relationship with the Vienna Philharmonic, one of the longest in the orchestra’s history. He knew the orchestra from his student years in Vienna, where he had studied under Hans Swarowsky, and the connection deepened over five decades of Salzburg appearances and touring. He was not a permanent figure at the Festival in the way of Karajan or Muti, but his repeated returns, and his position from 1998 to 2006 as Generalmusikdirektor of the Bavarian State Opera in nearby Munich, kept him embedded in the German-speaking classical world Salzburg anchors.
His wider renown rests on his tenure as Music Director of the Israel Philharmonic, which he held from 1977 until becoming emeritus in 2019, and on the Three Tenors concert in Rome in 1990 with Pavarotti, Domingo, and Carreras, watched by an estimated 800 million people. That concert brought classical music to audiences who had never considered entering a concert hall, which is perhaps the most accurate summary of what Mehta’s career was about.
On the map
The 2 places on this page, where they actually stand.
Locations
Built 1693
The Felsenreitschule is a theater carved directly into the Moenchsberg cliff face, which means the backstage wall is living rock and three tiers of 17th-century arcades form the auditorium. It was originally built in 1693 as a summer riding school for the Archbishop's horses.
Completed 1960
The Grosses Festspielhaus (Large Festival Hall) opened in 1960 as a major expansion of Salzburg's Festspielhaus complex, carved in large part from the Moenchsberg cliff face to achieve its 2,179-seat auditorium. Architect Clemens Holzmeister cut the main stage directly into the rock, creating one of the widest stages in the world at 100 meters.
Organizations
One of the world's most prestigious performing arts festivals. Held annually late July to end of August. Founded 1920 by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Max Reinhardt, Richard Strauss, Franz Schalk, and Alfred Roller. Inaugural event: Jedermann on Domplatz. Herbert von Karajan defined the postwar era. Opera, drama, concerts.
