In 1907 Gustav Mahler was ousted from his position as Director of the Vienna Court Opera, and was immediately taken up by impresario Heinrich Conrad for the remainder of the 1907/8 season at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York , starting on New Year's Day, 1908. Conrad already had the great Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini under contract; the presence of a second prestigious conductor at the Metropolitan would surely make his opera house the finest in America , if not in the world.
That first New York season ended in mid-April with a performance of Richard Wagner 's four-opera Ring cycle. Mahler conducted the second and third operas, Die Walk üre and Siegfried , the conducting duties for the other two operas