MUSIC
Early life
Kleiber was born as Karl Ludwig Bonifacius Kleiber in Berlin in 1930, the son of the eminent Austrian conductor Erich Kleiber and American Ruth Goodrich, from Waterloo, Iowa. In 1935, the Kleiber family emigrated to Buenos Aires and Karl was renamed Carlos. As a youth, he had an English governess and grew up in English boarding schools. He also composed, sang, and played piano and timpani. While his father noticed his son's musical talents, he nevertheless dissuaded Carlos from pursuing a musical career: "What a pity the boy is musically talented", wrote Erich to a friend.[5]
Carlos first studied chemistry at ETH Zurich but soon decided to dedicate himself to music. He was répétiteur at the Gärtnerplatz Theatre in Munich in 1952 and made his conducting debut with the operetta Gasparone at Pots
During his time at Düsseldorf his operatic repertoire included Giuseppe Verdi's La traviata, Rigoletto, I due Foscari and Otello, Giacomo Puccini's La bohème and Madama Butterfly, Richard Strauss' Daphne and Der Rosenkavalier, Jacques Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann plus several of his operettas, Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow, Engelbert Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel, Igor Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex and Ruggero Leoncavallo's Edipo re. At Zurich he conducted Verdi's Falstaff and Bedřich Smetana's The Bartered Bride for the first time.
Mature career
During his freelance career, Kleiber restricted his conducting appearances to select occasions. He made his British debut in 1966 with a performance at the Edinburgh Festival of Alban Berg's Wozzeck, a work whose premiere his father had conducted in 1925. Kleiber's repertoire at the Royal Opera House included Der Rosenkavalier, Elektra, La bohème and Otello.[7] He made his Bayreuth debut in 1974 conducting Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.
His American debut came in 1978 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where he again conducted in 1983, his only US orchestra appearances. His Metropolitan Opera debut was in 1988, conducting La bohème with Luciano Pavarotti and Mirella Freni. In 1989, following Herbert von Karajan's resignation from the Berlin Philharmonic, Kleiber was offered, but declined, the opportunity to succeed him as music director. He returned to the Met in 1989 to conduct La traviata, and in 1990 for Otello and Der Rosenkavalier.
Kleiber kept out of the public eye, and apparently gave an interview only once in his lifetime, contrary to reports that he never gave any. After he resigned from the Bavarian State Opera, his appearances became less frequent and he made only a few recordings.
Most of these studio recordings are highly regarded; they include Ludwig van Beethoven's fifth and seventh
Kleiber's small studio discography has been increased by a number of releases of live recordings, often sourced from broadcast relays. These have included his two Vienna New Year's Concerts, performances of Beethoven's Fourth and Seventh Symphonies with the Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Sixth with the Bavarian State Orchestra. The Sixth is especially notable as the only occasion on which Kleiber conducted the work; in this instance the source came not from a radio broadcast but a C-90 compact cassette recorded for his son.
