continued this concept in Hamburg. Cleveland years Christoph von Dohnányi made his conducting debut with The Cleveland Orchestra in December 1981 and was named “Music Director Designate” the following year. However, he would not begin his tenure as music director until 1984. During the intervening two years, the Orchestra invited a number of guest conductors to lead the ensemble, including former music director Erich Leinsdorf for six weeks of subscription concerts. Leinsdorf would remark that he was the "bridge between the regimes." Before taking the podium as the Orchestra’s sixth music director, Dohnányi made guest appearances with other American orchestras, including those in Detroit, Pittsburgh, and New York, as well as leading The Cleveland Orchestra in its annual gala concert and recordings at Severance Hall. As Dohnányi began his first season as music director, he brought with him contacts that would push the Orchestra forward with a variety of recording projects. Near the end of the 1984-85 season, Dohnányi announced an ambitious idea: The Cleveland Orchestra would use its summer home, Blossom Music Center, to perform a fully-staged opera: Mozart's The Magic Flute. The production, which was attended by 15,000 people, was labeled "the Ohio musical event of the summer" by The Columbus Dispatch. Dohnányi also oversaw the hiring of Indonesian-born conductor Jahja Ling, who would lead the newly-established Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, which had its first concert in February 1987. In addition to making recording a hallmark of his tenure as music director through the Orchestra's ongoing association with several labels (Teldec, Decca/London, and Telarc), Dohnányi focused much of his attention on international touring. In 1986, the Orchestra embarked on its sixth tour of Europe and its first international tour under Dohnányi, performing twenty-one concerts in seventeen cities across Western Europe. Not only would the Orchestra continue with international touring to Europe or East Asia nearly every season, it would also embark on tours of European festivals, including the Salzburg Festival, where the Orchestra’s long-standing relationship would begin after a performance in 1990. Because of the departure or retirement of several musicians between 1988 and 1990, Dohnányi was tasked with hiring new Orchestra members, including a replacement for Robert Page, who had been the longtime director of the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus. Furthermore, Leonard Slatkin, the former music director of the St. Louis Symphony, was appointed Blossom Festival Director beginning in the summer of 1991. To celebrate The Cleveland Orchestra’s