 The conductor worked at the Chicago Opera, the Montreal Opera and San Francisco Opera before being hired by the Met as its assistant chorus master.He established himself as a coach, especially in German repertoire, serving as mentor to several generations of Met singers, from Birgit Nilsson, who called him "the father" of her Elektra, to Plácido Domingo, who coached the role of Parsifal with him, and Deborah Voigt.His principal conducting credits with the Met numbered fewer than a dozen performances - among them "La Traviata" on the company's 1975 tour of Japan - but in "Der Rosenkavalier" and in other operas, Taussig was a frequent leader of the Met's offstage instrumentalists, nicknamed "The Taussig Philharmonic" by James Levine.