Editing Dimitri Mitropoulos (section)

=== Work in opera ===
In addition to his orchestral career, Mitropoulos conducted opera extensively in Italy, and from 1954 until his death in 1960 was the principal conductor of the [[Metropolitan Opera]] in New York, although the Met never had an official 'principal conductor' title until the 1970s. His musically incisive and dramatically vivid performances of [[Puccini]], [[Verdi]], [[Richard Strauss]] and others remain models of the opera conductor's art. The Met's extensive archive of recorded broadcasts preserves many of these fine performances.

Mitropoulos's series of recordings for Columbia Records with the New York Philharmonic included a rare complete performance of [[Alban Berg]]'s ''[[Wozzeck]]''. Many of these have been reissued by Sony Classics on CD, including most recently his stereo recordings of excerpts from Prokofiev's ''[[Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)|Romeo and Juliet]]''. He recorded with the Minneapolis Symphony for [[RCA Victor]] during the 78-rpm era.  He was also represented on the [[Cetra Records]] label, most notably with an early recording of Richard Strauss's ''[[Elektra (opera)|Elektra]]''.

Mitropoulos premiered many contemporary works. Examples include the American premieres of Shostakovich's [[Symphony No. 10 (Shostakovich)|Tenth Symphony]] (1954) and [[Violin Concerto No. 1 (Shostakovich)|First Violin Concerto]] (1956) and the world premieres of Barber's [[Vanessa (opera)|''Vanessa'']] (1958), [[Ernst Krenek]]'s Fourth Symphony (1947), and [[John J. Becker]]'s ''Short Symphony'' (1950).