One of the best-known conductors of the last quarter of the 20th century,
Zubin Mehta is known for his flamboyant, passionate style on the podium. A conductor of the
New York Philharmonic and
Israel Philharmonic Orchestras for many years, he has appeared with orchestras all over the world and has sought to use classical music as a force for peace in troubled regions.
Mehta was born in Bombay (now Mumbai), in British-controlled India, on April 29, 1936. His first language was Gujarati, and the family adhered to the Parsi religion. His father, Mehli Mehta, was a violinist and conductor who co-founded the Bombay Symphony Orchestra. Part of the key to
Zubin's later confidence and success as a conductor is that he began very early; his father taught him to play violin and piano and to conduct, and from his early teens, he was leading sectional rehearsals with the Bombay Symphony; he took rehearsals with the entire ensemble at 16.
Mehta's mother wanted him to study medicine, and he enrolled at St. Xavier's College, Bombay, with that aim, but after two years, he dropped out and moved to Vienna, Austria. Living on a shoestring, he took conducting lessons from
Hans Swarowsky at the Vienna Academy of Music and learned the double bass so he could find orchestral work. After winning a contest, he received a one-year appointment as the assistant conductor with the
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. This led to prestigious guest conducting posts with the
Vienna Philharmonic and the
Philadelphia Orchestra and then, in 1960 and 1962, respectively, to music director posts with the
Montreal Symphony and the
Los Angeles Philharmonic. For the former post, he had help from
Charles Munch, whom he had impressed at a contest at the Tanglewood Music Festival. The jet-setting conductor who holds posts in far-flung cities has become commonplace, but
Mehta was one of the first whose career followed the pattern. He built the
Los Angeles Philharmonic into one of the major U.S. orchestras.
Mehta resigned his
Montreal post in 1967, beginning a long association with the
Israel Philharmonic that came to an end only in 2017. He left the
Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1978, succeeding
Pierre Boulez as the music director of the
New York Philharmonic. He remained in New York until 1991.
Mehta also became the music director of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, entering into the musical life of Florence and later becoming an honorary citizen of that city. The tendency to engage with an orchestra's surroundings rather than simply flying in to conduct could be seen especially clearly in his work with the
Israel Philharmonic, which he conducted during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the 1982 Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon (where he conducted for both Israeli and Arab audiences, with the latter receiving him enthusiastically), and the 1991 Gulf War.
Conducting the internationally televised
Three Tenors concerts featuring
Luciano Pavarotti,
Plácido Domingo, and
José Carreras,
Mehta gained wide public exposure for his outsized style, perfectly suited to these concerts. After leaving his
New York Philharmonic post,
Mehta assumed the music directorship of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich in 1998, remaining in that post until 2006. He also became the music director of the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, Spain, in 2005. During the 1990s and 2000s,
Mehta took the opportunity to conduct orchestras and operas in large, one-of-a-kind events. In 1992, he conducted a performance of
Puccini's opera Tosca, starring
Domingo as Cavaradossi, at the actual places specified in the score in real time.
Mehta conducted a similar production of
Puccini's Turandot in China in 1998, directed by filmmaker Zhang Yimou with 300 soldiers and 300 extras.
Mehta's recording catalog is one of the most extensive of any contemporary conductor's, comprising well over 200 albums and beginning with a 1973 recording of Tosca, starring
Leontyne Price and recorded for RCA. His output focuses on Romantic orchestral repertory, most often from the second half of the 19th century, but encompasses a startling variety of music, from early American composer
John Knowles Paine to
Schoenberg, to opera and film soundtracks (he led the
Los Angeles Philharmonic in
Frank Zappa's film
200 Motels in 1971), to Vienna's Summer Night and New Year's concerts. He has rarely recorded contemporary music.
Mehta remained active into old age, releasing a new recording of
Haydn's oratorio Die Schöpfung, Hob. 21/2, with the
Munich Philharmonic in 2021, when he was 85.