Indian conductor Zubin Mehta, former director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, fell ill on February 13 at La Scala in Milan while conducting rehearsals of
Salomé,
opera by Richard Strauss.
This performance was to be broadcast live on February 20 on Rai 5. Zubin Mehta was immediately hospitalized.
His reassuring doctors immediately declared that the discomfort was due only to “
the overwork and the stress it induced
” as reported by the specialist site Resmusica.
Despite the conductor's discharge from hospital only hours later, the cautious management of La Scala in Milan decided that Riccardo Chailly, the reigning conductor of the Milanese lyric theater, would replace Zubin Mehta on February 20.
Read also: Zubin Mehta, the most Viennese of the Indians
Directed by Damiano Michieletto, this new reading
of Strauss's
Salomé
will bring together on the Scala stage the Russian soprano Elena Stikhina in the role of the heroine, the German baritone Wolfgang Koch in that of Jochanaan, the German tenor Gerhard Siegel in Herods and finally the American soprano Linda Watson in Herodias.
The impossibility for Zubin Mehta to conduct
Salomé
on February 20 must be a real heartbreak for him because it was at La Scala, in 1974, that he made his debut conducting the opera by Richard Strauss inspired by the work by Oscar Wilde.
A 1991 recording
of Richard Strauss's
Salomé
performed by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Zubin Mehta
