Australia and New Zealand. Because of a tightly-packed schedule, conducting duties were split between Maazel, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, and former music director Erich Leinsdorf. The season, which also featured performances of Strauss’s one-act opera Elektra at Cleveland’s Severance Hall and New York’s Carnegie Hall, closed with a dozen concerts across Japan. In 1974-75, Maazel led the Orchestra on a tour of South America and Central America. He also conducted the ensemble’s recording of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess — the Orchestra’s first recording of an opera and Decca’s first opera recording in the United States. Three years later, on December 10, 1978, he guided the Orchestra’s 60th anniversary concert, which included Victor Herbert’s American Fantasy — also played during the ensemble’s debut concert on December 11, 1918. The following fall, however, rumors began to swirl that Maazel was the top candidate for the directorship of the Vienna State Opera. Although the appointment was still several years away, arrangements were made to have Maazel conduct The Cleveland Orchestra through the 1981-82 season before departing for Europe. During the final years of Maazel’s tenure in Cleveland, the Musical Arts Association launched a concert to honor the life and works of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., which would become an annual tradition, and the Orchestra hosted a 50th anniversary celebration for Severance Hall featuring the same program as the ensemble played on the concert hall’s opening night in 1931 — Bach’s Passacaglia in C Minor, Charles Martin Loeffler’s Invocation, Brahms’s First Symphony, and selections from Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. Across Maazel’s final season with The Cleveland Orchestra, he would conduct only seven of the season’s subscription series concerts. His last performance at Severance Hall, on May 15, 1982, included a presentation of Verdi’s Requiem, which he also brought on tour the following week to Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and Woolsey Hall at Yale University. The Verdi had been Maazel’s debut piece in New York with The Cleveland Orchestra at the start of his tenure in 1972. Later years In 1977, he became music director of the Orchestre National de France in Paris, a position he held until 1991. From 1982 to 1984, Maazel served at the Vienna State Opera as general manager and principal conductor. In 1980, he succeeded Willi Boskovsky as conductor at the Vienna New Year's Concert and he led this televised annual event each year, until 1986. He returned to it four times: