[4] He directed a second Ring for the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden,[2] Aida at the Vienna State Opera in 1984,[5] Verdi's Ernani and Wagner's Parsifal in San Francisco, Wagner's Lohengrin in Copenhagen, Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci in Amsterdam and Gothenburg, Verdi's Rigoletto, La traviata and La forza del destino at the Opernhaus Zürich, Salomé by Richard Strauss in Essen, and Mussorgski's Boris Godunov and Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi at the Theater Bremen.
He staged Gounod's Roméo et Juliette at the Royal Opera House in London, and Bizet's Carmen at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.
[4][7] In 1998, he directed Aida for the reopening of the Teatro Massimo of Palermo,[6] and he staged Lucia di Lammermoor at the Metropolitan Opera.
[6] In France, he directed Puccini's Turandot and Massenet's Thaïs in Nancy,[6] Ponchielli's La Gioconda and Verdi's Les Vêpres siciliennes at the Opéra national de Montpellier, Debussy's La Damoiselle élue and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas with Jessye Norman at the Paris Opera, Gounod's Faust and the world premiere of Marcel Landowski's Montségur in Toulouse, and Andrea Chénier at the Opéra du Rhin and the Opéra de Lyon.
[6] He reopened the Théâtre du Capitole, after the renovation of the stage cage, in October 2004, with a new production of Janáček's Jenůfa.
[17] In October 2012, Joel announced that he would not stand for another term, after learning of the Opera's budgetary planning for the coming years.