Weil Uses ‘Don Giovanni’ as His Calling Card : Music: Mozart’s opera has been on the agenda at all turning points in the conductor’s career.

For Bruno Weil, “Don Giovanni” has become a good luck charm.

At the 1988 Salzburg Festival, Weil on short notice took over the reins of “Don Giovanni” from an ailing Herbert von Karajan, a performance that led to a close association with the Austrian maestro until his death in July, and brought Weil to the attention of the music world.

“Don Giovanni” was the first opera the young West German conducted in Augsburg, where he subsequently was named Generalmusikdirector , a post he held for eight years.

Now, in a series of Mozart programs with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, through Sunday, Weil’s calling card will be the Overture to “Don Giovanni.”

“All deciding points of my career have come to me with this difficult work,” Weil, 40, said from Vienna. “I hope this (performance) with the Philharmonic will be another fortunate thing.”

Weil caught the eye of Karajan when conducting Richard Strauss’ symphonic poem “Don Juan”--at breakneck speed--at the finals of the 1979 Herbert von Karajan International Conducting Competition in Berlin. Although he placed second, Weil was invited to Salzburg to serve as a cover conductor for Karajan. Weil was at rehearsals and was able to discuss problems with Karajan. Above all, he was able to learn.

“He had such a remarkable sound and I wanted to find out how to make that sound,” Weil recalled of Karajan. “He did simple things. Over and over again he’d tell his orchestra of 30 years (the Berlin Philharmonic) to play longer notes and play softer. He told me the secret was never to cease saying the same things again and again.

“I was very much influenced by him but I have a different way of looking at the music. He came from the German Romantic period and everything is big and slow in tempo. I hope to put myself back in the 18th Century and see the music from the eyes of the composer in his time.”

Although Weil went on to lead a number of concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic, it was at Karajan’s urgings that Weil sought a provincial post in Augsburg, near Munich, where he was able to grow and work on “the whole” repertory.

“This was the best advice Karajan could have given me,” said Weil, who with his wife and two children resides in Augsburg, a city of 250,000. Here, in the city where Mozart’s father was born, Weil was responsible for opera--Mozart, Verdi, Wagner and Strauss--as well as all symphonic concerts and ballet given in the city.

Having recently resigned his post at Augsburg, Weil becomes a conducting “member” of the Vienna Staatsoper beginning in 1991. Under a new system, no more than a dozen conductors will work on specific operas for months at a time. This way productions won’t change hands so often, said Weil, who expects to “polish up” existing Mozart repertory.

At the behest of baritone Hermann Prey, with whom he had worked in Vienna, Weil in 1988 made his U.S. debut conducting Schubert’s First Symphony at the Schubertiade festival at the 92nd Street Y in New York.

Weil has little envy of jet-setting colleagues with high-gear careers. Content to “conduct at Bayreuth when 75,” he attributes his serenity to Zen Buddhism. Weil first embraced the teachings five years ago when, after too many performances of Wagner, he began experiencing pain in his back and arms and felt the need to release the tension gripping his body.

“Zen Buddhism has taught me more about conducting than anything else. It’s taught me to relax, and to let the music come from inside and out and down to the orchestra and to the audience,” said Weil.

“Now, I’m happy if things come to me; happy if they don’t.”