In 1951, Maazel won a Fulbright Scholarship to study Baroque music in Italy, and made his European conducting debut in Catania. This was followed by other appearances including, in 1960, a concert with the London Symphony Orchestra and an invitation to the Bayreuth Festival, where he was the first American to conduct Richard Wagner's Lohengrin.
In 1962, he conducted the French Orchestre National on a visit to New York and, in the same year, made his debut at the Metropolitan...