Through his varied career, he has taken the lead in the preservation and performance of many genres of music and supervised and conducted important premieres by composers as diverse as Debussy, Stockhausen, Korngold, Hindemith, Bernstein, Sibelius, Ives, Elfman and Shore.
In addition he studied 20th-century architecture with Vincent Scully, French literature with Henri Peyre, religion (Pelikan and Kuttner) and psychology (Logan and Childe).
In his senior year he made his conducting debut (December 4, 1966, Branford College), composed the music for a production of Brecht's A Man Is a Man, guest conducted the Yale Symphony Orchestra (YSO), and produced and music directed Benjamin Britten's Curlew River at Yale's St. Thomas More Chapel (March 11 and 12, 1967) and then brought the production to New York City for its New York premiere, which took place at the Catholic Chapel of the United Nations (Holy Family church) on May 13 and 14, 1967.
[6] Committed to preserving two American art forms, the Broadway musical, and Hollywood film scores, he has edited and performed many restorations and first performances, including a full restoration of the original 1943 production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma!, performing editions of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, Girl Crazy and Strike up the Band, Bernstein's Candide and A Quiet Place, and film scores by Miklós Rózsa, Franz Waxman, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Max Steiner, Elmer Bernstein, Jerry Goldsmith, Danny Elfman and Howard Shore.
[8] In 1988, as Music Director of Scottish Opera, Mauceri initiated a third version based on a reading of Voltaire adapted by John Wells and directed by Jonathan Miller.
[10] Mauceri took a leadership role in reevaluating the American musical theater in his historically informed performances and recordings of classic American musicals, such as the Gershwins' 1930 score to Girl Crazy (Elektra Nonesuch 9 79250-2) in 1990 (winner of the Edison Klassiek Award), both the 1927 and 1930 versions of the Gershwins' Strike Up the Band (1991 – Elektra Nonesuch 79273-2 and PS Classics PS-1100 respectively) and most importantly On Your Toes (1936) by Rodgers and Hart which he initiated and co-produced in 1983.
[citation needed] Andrew Lloyd Webber attended a performance of La bohème at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in the winter of 1984 that was conducted by Mauceri and as a result invited him to be the musical supervisor of the Broadway production of his Song and Dance, which opened on September 18, 1985, and received eight Tony Award nominations, and one win for Bernadette Peters.
In October 1995, after the first recording session for the soundtrack to Evita failed, "Andrew ... suggested we bring in the celebrated American conductor John Mauceri.
... By the end of the week, the maestro Mauceri had performed his magic with a brilliant catchment of the finest orchestral players in London and all thoughts of Black Monday were forgotten.
Mauceri brought Street Scene for its country premieres in Portugal (Lisbon Opera), and Italy (Teatro Regio, Turin).
In 2001, Mauceri led the world premiere recording of Weill's early operatic success, Der Protagonist from 1926 (Capriccio 60 086) which was also broadcast on German radio in a concert performance in the Berliner Philharmonie.
[15] At Washington Opera and La Scala, Mauceri had the privilege of conducting the American and European premieres of Leonard Bernstein's A Quiet Place in 1984.
During this time Mauceri edited, supervised and conducted numerous Bernstein works throughout the world, including many premieres, at the composers request.
"During his sixteen-season tenure, Mauceri and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra toured Japan four times and, in November 1996, performed two public concerts in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil, representing the first time an American orchestra was invited to Brazil specifically to perform the great music of the American cinema.
(winner of a National Educational Television Award), and the American premiere of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's score in a fully staged production of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing (regional Emmy for Best Arts Program, 2013).
He returned to his alma mater in 2001 to teach a course in 20th century aesthetic history and the effects of World War II on current perceptions of classical music.
[citation needed] In other media, Mauceri had a small role as the character Claude Maginot in 2002's Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
He appeared briefly as himself in the second episode of the Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip TV series, conducting the fictional "West Coast Philharmonic".