On 26 September the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino gives Mahler's Second Symphony in the Sala Zubin Mehta, the auditorium named after its honorary director for life. The Violin Channel and OperaWire report the theatre as saying Zubin Mehta will be in the audience on 26 September. He was to have conducted.
Mehta, who turned 90 on 29 April, has withdrawn. The theatre announced it in a statement dated 7 September. Thomas Guggeis conducts on 26 September instead, and he was already in the building, rehearsing Berg's Wozzeck for performances opening on 27 September.
The theatre's statement is brief and generous. In The Violin Channel's English rendering: "Teatro del Maggio and Maestro Mehta thank Maestro Guggeis, who is currently engaged in rehearsals for the opera Wozzeck, for accepting to conduct the concert and ensuring its regular performance."
That is the news. The reason to write it up is what happened when Zubin Mehta cancelled in Berlin in 2018, because that, in the Staatsoper Unter den Linden's own words, is how Guggeis won international attention. It is not the first Mehta concert in this hall that Guggeis has taken over in 2026: on 13 January the Maggio announced that he, instead of Mehta, would conduct Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde there on 23 April.
Berlin, 2018
On 3 January 2018 the Staatsoper Unter den Linden announced that Mehta needed shoulder surgery and would cancel his engagements to the end of March. Its own press release says so plainly: Mehta had to undergo a shoulder operation and cancel his commitments through to the end of March 2018, and this affected the musical direction of the new production of Richard Strauss's Salome, whose premiere was set for 4 March.
Christoph von Dohnányi took the production over. Thomas Guggeis, then 24 and Daniel Barenboim's assistant at the house, was assigned a single performance, the last night of the run on 17 March.
Then Dohnányi withdrew too. The house's second press release, dated 2 March, records that he had asked to be released from conducting Salome, citing artistic differences with the director Hans Neuenfels, and that Guggeis had already conducted the dress rehearsal.
So the 24-year-old assistant, down for one night at the end of a run, inherited the entire production including its premiere. The critic Yehya Alazem, writing in klassik-begeistert about that first night, recorded the sequence and then the result: under Guggeis the Staatskapelle Berlin produced detailed, well-flowing playing that sounded wonderful in its balance between symphonic and chamber-musical feeling.
One point of timing is worth getting right, because it is easy to tell this story as Guggeis taking over hours before the premiere. He did not. Dohnányi gave up the conducting in the week before the premiere, Guggeis conducted the dress rehearsal on Thursday 1 March 2018, and the house announced the change on 2 March, two days before the premiere. The drama belongs to the Generalprobe, not the first night, and the distinction matters because the real version is impressive enough without improvement.
The arithmetic
From that premiere to this Florence concert:
| Guggeis conducts the Salome premiere, Berlin | 4 March 2018 |
| Guggeis conducts Mahler 2 in Mehta's place, Florence | 26 September 2026 |
| Elapsed | 3,128 days, or 8 years, 6 months and 22 days |
And a symmetry worth setting down. The 2018 chain began with a Mehta withdrawal. Count from the day the Staatsoper announced Mehta's shoulder surgery, 3 January 2018, to the Florence concert, and it is 3,188 days.
A cancellation by Zubin Mehta set off the chain that made Thomas Guggeis's name. Eight and a half years later, he has taken over two Mahler concerts that Mehta was to have conducted in the hall named after him: Das Lied von der Erde on 23 April and the Second Symphony on 26 September.
Where Guggeis is now
He is no longer a house assistant. Since the 2023-24 season Guggeis has been General Music Director of Oper Frankfurt and artistic director of the Frankfurter Museumskonzerte, on a five-year contract. The Staatsoper Unter den Linden, the house where the Salome happened, named him Staatskapellmeister from the 2020-21 season.
He was born in 1993 in Dachau, in Bavaria.
The hall with his name on it
The Sala Zubin Mehta has about 1,100 seats and was inaugurated in Mehta's honour on 21 December 2021, with the President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella, present. Mehta is the Maggio's honorary director for life.
So the 26 September concert is an unusual piece of theatre in itself: a conductor expected, according to The Violin Channel and OperaWire, in the audience of a room named after him, with his wife Nancy, while somebody else conducts the Resurrection Symphony from the podium he would have stood on.
The soloists are the soprano Nikoletta Hertsak and the mezzo-soprano Natalie Lewis.
Mahler's Second is also, of all the pieces that could have been on that stand, among the least forgiving to hand over at short notice. It usually runs 80 to 90 minutes, needs a chorus and two vocal soloists as well as a large orchestra, and its finale uses offstage brass and percussion. A conductor taking it on 19 days out, counting from the theatre's 7 September announcement, is not covering a routine programme.
What the 2018 premiere was actually like
It is worth being precise about what Guggeis walked into, because saying only that he stepped in and it went well flattens the thing.
Neuenfels's staging drew protests against the director on the first night, by Alazem's account, and somewhat more restrained applause than the performance, by Musik Heute's. The first-night accounts Cadenza read separate the production from the pit, and it is the pit that made Guggeis's name. Alazem's account credits Guggeis and the orchestra with building the drama, and describes the Staatskapelle Berlin's playing as balancing symphonic and chamber-musical feeling.
The change was announced two days before the premiere. The 24-year-old had one dress rehearsal already behind him, a divisive production around him and an audience that, by Alazem's account, protested against its director. What those accounts record is that the orchestra sounded good.
Where to hear him in Florence
The Mahler concert on 26 September had sold out long before Mehta withdrew, Firenze Post reported on 8 September; on 24 September it said online sales were sold out and a few tickets might still be found at the theatre's box office. On 24 September the theatre's website showed a purchase link for each of the three Wozzeck performances that follow.
He conducts Berg's Wozzeck at the same theatre in Deborah Warner's production from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. The premiere is on Sunday 27 September at 17:00, with repeats on Wednesday 30 September at 20:00 and Saturday 3 October at 15:30, in the Sala Grande. On 25 September the theatre's website listed full-price tickets from €15 to €130.
The theatre says the performance on 30 September will be broadcast live on Rai Radio 3.
This is not the first cancellation of the year
Reporting a ninety-year-old conductor's withdrawals requires some care, and Cadenza is going to report only what institutions have themselves announced and nothing about anyone's health beyond that.
By 30 October 2025 the Bavarian State Opera had announced that Mehta would not conduct its Die Fledermaus performances between 31 December and 10 January, for personal reasons, and that Nicholas Carter would replace him. On 13 January 2026 the Maggio announced that two of Mehta's April concerts in Florence would go to other conductors: Beethoven's Missa Solemnis on 3 April to Vasily Petrenko, and Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde on 23 April to Thomas Guggeis. In May 2026 it was announced in Munich that Mehta had withdrawn from both of the Bavarian State Opera's Turandot series in June and July, and that he had changed the programme of his 30 May birthday concert in Munich from Mahler's Third Symphony to Brahms and Schubert. The Florence withdrawal was announced on 7 September.
Nothing beyond what the institutions have announced belongs in print.
The job that made it possible
Guggeis was not a guest in Berlin in 2018. He was staff.
He had been Daniel Barenboim's assistant at the Staatsoper since the 2016-17 season, and he was already on the Salome schedule for its final night. He took the dress rehearsal on 1 March and the premiere three days later.
That is what an assistant conductor is for, and it is the least glamorous line on any opera house's payroll. It is also the line that saved a Berlin premiere in 2018, and the conductor who came up through it is now taking over a sold-out Mahler Second in Florence on 26 September.
In June 2025 it was a season brochure
The Florence concert was in the Maggio's published season, announced on 30 June 2025 with Mehta conducting, and its tickets had been sold out for some time before the change of conductor was announced, according to Firenze Post.
Cadenza carries auditions, vacancies and schemes with open deadlines, free to musicians, on its jobs board and competitions board.
If you want to hear Guggeis in Florence. The Wozzeck dates are above, and the 30 September performance is to be broadcast live on Rai Radio 3.
The question is for the profession rather than for either conductor. Guggeis made his name because a house had an assistant ready who was already on the Salome schedule and had conducted its dress rehearsal, and used him. How many houses still keep somebody on the staff who could take over a premiere in its final week, and how many have quietly stopped?
Sources: the Staatsoper Unter den Linden's own press releases, the first announcing Mehta's withdrawal from Salome after shoulder surgery and Dohnányi's taking over and the second, dated 2 March 2018, announcing that Guggeis would take over from Dohnányi and recording that he had already conducted the dress rehearsal; Yehya Alazem's review of the premiere in klassik-begeistert, which is free to read and was read in full, and Musik Heute's first-night report; Oper Frankfurt's own page for Guggeis's current post and the Staatsoper's biography; the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino's statement of 7 September on the Florence change of conductor, in English as carried by The Violin Channel, and its announcement of 13 January on the April concerts; Firenze Post on tickets; and the Bavarian State Opera's announcements as carried by OperaWire and Klassik Heute. The intervals of 3,128 and 3,188 days are Cadenza's arithmetic from those dated announcements.
Cadenza found no freely licensed photograph of Thomas Guggeis on Wikimedia Commons when it searched on 24 September 2026.
Correction, 24 September 2026: an earlier version of this article said Guggeis owed his career to "the last time" Mehta cancelled, meaning 2018; the Maggio had already given him Mehta's Das Lied von der Erde in Florence on 23 April 2026. It dated the Florence announcement to 8 September (the theatre's statement is dated 7 September) and the Bavarian State Opera's Fledermaus announcement to 5 November 2025 (it was public by 30 October). It said Guggeis holds the title of Staatskapellmeister (the Staatsoper gives it as a past post), that his birth date is not publicly documented (one is published), and that Mehta had dropped a June Turandot in Munich (he dropped both the June and the July series). It gave the interval as about 8 years and 7 months (it is 8 years, 6 months and 22 days) and the notice for the Mahler as three weeks (19 days from the announcement). It said the Berlin staging was booed (the boos a first-night reviewer recorded were for the soprano; for the director he recorded protests), added words to that reviewer's description of the orchestra, and said the sold-out Mahler could not be acted on (a few tickets may remain at the box office). It said the assistant's post saved two productions in a row in Berlin in 2018 (it was one production, the Salome above). It said Dohnányi withdrew shortly before the 1 March dress rehearsal and that Guggeis took that rehearsal at no notice and the premiere at two days' notice (the house says only that he had already conducted the dress rehearsal, and it announced the change on 2 March, two days before the premiere; none of the 2018 sources Cadenza read gives the notice he had). It gave the hall's capacity as between 1,100 and 1,200 seats (the reports of its opening say 1,100), said Mehta would conduct a lightened programme at a 30 May gala instead of the Turandot (the programme of his 30 May birthday concert was changed from Mahler's Third to Brahms and Schubert), and said there was nothing on the record beyond the withdrawals it listed (The Violin Channel had reported another, from concerts in October 2025).
Cover photograph: Zubin Mehta at the podium in 2024. Photo: Alexander Khanin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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