Word: mehtas
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Metropolitan Opera General Manager Rudolf Bing saw Mehta conduct Tosca in Montreal in 1964 and recalls that "it was very funny. I engaged him." Funny? "There were many mistakes," explains Bing. "He was totally inexperienced. But it was all overshadowed by his personality and talent. Experience anyone can get." Mehta made his Met debut in December 1965 with Aïda, quickly became one of the top cocks in the Met pit. This season he has conducted three major productions, including a new Carmen. Says Bing: "I am still impressed by his talent and personality-and now it is less...
Even now, Mehta-like several of his generation-has an impressive body of achievements to justify his defiant reply to the doubting voices of tradition: "Some people treat us as if we were still kids in the playpen. All of us have already done enough to be more highly regarded than that. I think we will be as great as the generation of Furtwängler and Toscanini...
Within less than a decade of finishing his conservatory training, Mehta has pushed so far toward the top of his profession that Philadelphia's Ormandy can say: "In spite of his youth, he has very much arrived. I consider him the finest of the young conductors." That Mehta has done this at so young an age illustrates the striking departure that has occurred from the pattern of a generation ago. Conductors traditionally rose through an arduous apprenticeship with provincial opera houses and orchestras, rarely surfacing internationally until they were in their 40s and 50s. "Mehta," says his friend Israeli...
...strain of triangulating his career through New York, Montreal and Los Angeles became too much for even Mehta, and last year he said goodbye to Montreal. But he is still a jet-age conductor who hops continents to keep engagements. Besides normal coast-to-coast shuttling, he detours to make recordings and television films, frequently darts off to orchestra podiums and festival halls from London to Tel Aviv. Last spring he led the Los Angeles Philharmonic on a U.S. tour; after each six days of traveling, while his musicians rested for a day, Mehta crisscrossed the nation to conduct...
...Gesture. Even when he is not making music, Mehta exerts the near-hypnotic spell of a gregarious, cultivated gypsy. He is small (5 ft. 7 in., 155 Ibs.), but his tousled sable locks, his honey-colored aquiline features and voracious energy give him the appeal of a matinee idol and make him a kind of culture hero. Even the English translation of his first name-"powerful sword"-seems to personify his character. In Los Angeles, strangers hail him as "Zubi baby." Everywhere, the wealthy and famous seek him out, and females from teeny-boppers to blue-haired patronesses shiver