When Peter Gelb took over as general manager of the Metropolitan Opera in 2006, a certain breed of purist shuddered. Gelb, after all, championed new-age composer Vangelis and, as head of Sony Classical, released the Titanic soundtrack.

The purists can breathe easy. Gelb has so far managed to innovate without trampling on tradition. And this month, he has lured Lorin Maazel—music director of the New York Philharmonic since 2002 and one of classical music's most formal (some say coldest) conductors—back to the Met for the first time since the '60s. Beginning on January 7, Maazel will conduct five performances of Wagner's Die Walküre.

"I decided I would go after a star," says Gelb, speaking in his office at the Met, where a flat-screen TV broadcasts a live feed from the stage. (At the moment, stagehands are setting up for the evening's performance of Verdi's Aida.) "But I realized we'd have to be incredibly lucky."

Blue-chip names like Maazel's can give a financial boost to performing-arts institutions, which are under increasing pressure to attract subscribers and bolster ticket sales. Gelb has recruited a range of splashy guest stars—filmmaker Anthony Minghella directed Madama Butterfly, for example—and made better use of the internet and other new media to publicize the Met. His marketing plan for Die Walküre puts Maazel front and center: The conductor will be featured prominently on the Met's website, promoted in subscriber "e-blasts," and interviewed on the Met's Sirius radio channel. He'll also appear in newspaper ads and on the plasma-screen TVs in the Met's lobby.

The Met had been suffering commercially in the years leading up to Gelb's appointment. During the 2000-01 season, box office sales were at 91 percent of the venue's capacity. After 9/11, the figure sank to 82 percent, bottoming out at 77 percent in the 2005-06 season. In 2006-07, Gelb's first as general manager, returns bounced back to 84 percent. This season, the opera house has added 2,500 new full subscribers, an uptick of 15 percent.

Normally, the big stars of classical music are booked years in advance. But because Maazel was already in town, Gelb approached him to stand in for James Levine, the Met's music director, after Levine withdrew from Die Walküre because of scheduling conflicts. "Usually I don't do revivals, but Wagner is irresistible," Maazel says. "Being invited to conduct at the Metropolitan is certainly a lovely thing."

Not lovely enough until now, apparently. Maazel has not returned to the Met since his debut in the 1962-63 season, when he conducted Don Giovanni and Der Rosenkavalier.

"It's not that I wasn't invited, but I wasn't free or the opera didn't interest me," says Maazel. "It just sort of worked out that way."

Joseph Volpe, Gelb's predecessor, asked Maazel to conduct twice, for revivals of Ariadne and Salome. "Lorin sent me a very nice note back, saying that I made him feel young again, because he had stopped doing revivals years ago," recalls Volpe. "Obviously, his schedule has opened up."

It's about to open up even more: Maazel intends to retire from the New York Philharmonic in 2009. (Alan Gilbert will replace him.) Maazel, who has composed one opera, is considering writing another.

In addition to Maazel, Gelb has signed up Riccardo Muti, the former music director of the Teatro alla Scala, in Milan, and Esa-Pekka Salonen, the music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, neither of whom has conducted at the Metropolitan Opera before.

Despite the run of good gets, Gelb is managing expectations. He says he hopes to sell out all six nights of Die Walküre (the final performance will be conducted by Donald Runnicles of the San Francisco Opera) but won't guarantee it. "It's all speculative," he says. "This is showbiz."