However, his musical talent could not be denied, and he returned to Buenos Aires the following year to complete his musical training, before going back to Europe in 1951 to work in Munich’s Theater am Gärtnerplatz as a coach. He made his conducting debut at Potsdam in 1954, under the pseudonym Karl Keller.
Kleiber held, successively, posts with the Vienna Volksoper, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, the Zurich Opera and the Stuttgart Opera in the 1950s and 60s. From 1968 to 1978, he had a guest contract at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, where he conducted some of his most notable performances, among them the famous Otto Schenk production of Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier,” which is preserved on video. It is one of the most convincing stagings of the work ever heard or seen.
Kleiber first appeared in Britain with the Stuttgart Opera at the Edinburgh Festival in 1966. He first conducted at Covent Garden (“Der Rosenkavalier”) in 1974, creating something of a sensation. His later appearances, in charge of arrestingly immediate accounts of “Elektra,” “La Bohème” and “Otello,” were acclaimed as events of theatrical and music significance quite out of the ordinary. He made his debuts at La Scala (“Der Rosenkavalier”) in 1974, and at the New York Metropolitan, conducting “La Bohème,” in 1988.
Another of Kleiber’ s most important engagements was at the Bayreuth Festival, from 1974 to 1976, conducting “Tristan und Isolde.” No one who was present, as I was, will ever forget the frisson of those incandescent performances.