times ... It was a lunging, teeming, breathless performance that still had plenty of breath." He subsequently conducted the Met in performances of Carmen, Tosca, and Turandot. For Montreal's Expo 67, he conducted both the Montreal and the Los Angeles orchestras together for a performance of Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique. Also that year he conducted the world premier of Marvin David Levy's Mourning Becomes Electra. By May 1967, his schedule was becoming overcrowded and he resigned his Montreal post. That fall he took the 107-member Los Angeles Philharmonic on an eight-week tour, including engagements in Vienna, Paris, Athens, and Bombay. By 1968, his popularity kept him busier than the year before, including 22 weeks of concerts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, three operas at the Met, television appearances in the U.S. and Italy, five recording sessions, and guest appearances at five festivals and with five orchestras. Time magazine put him on its cover in January 1968. In 1969 his schedule remained equally active. In 1970 Mehta performed with Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention on Zappa's "200 Motels" and Edgar Varese's Intergrales, at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion basketball stadium with an audience of 12,000. There is no authorized recording, though some bootlegs exist. 1970s–1980s In 1978, Mehta became the Music Director and Principal Conductor of the New York Philharmonic and remained there until his resignation in 1991. He became music director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) in 1977. He began the first of many guest appearances with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) in 1961. In 1966, he toured with the orchestra, and during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, he rushed back to Israel to conduct several special concerts to "demonstrate solidarity" with its people. He was appointed IPO's Music Advisor in 1969, Music Director in 1977, and was made its Music Director for Life in 1981. During his five-decade connection with the IPO, he has conducted it in thousands of concerts in Israel and abroad. He conducted concerts with the IPO in South Lebanon in 1982, after which Arabs rushed onstage to hug the musicians. He conducted it during the Gulf War in 1991, when the audience brought gas masks; in 2007, it played for an entirely Arab audience in Nazareth. He claims to have a "deep kinship" with Israel's musicians and the "spirit and tradition of the Jewish people". He adds that conducting the IPO is "something I do for my heart".