The orchestra felt sorry for him, concentrated hard and played the difficult passage beautifully.
Kleiber also had a modern, unrestrained approach to the purely physical aspect of conducting.
Yet his gestures were calculated not for their effect on the audience or to mime emotions but simply to draw the best possible results from singers and players - to help them give their best.
His way with words was often amusing.
Once, when he was rehearsing the Scala orchestra in the slithery, insinuating passage that leads into Iago's soliloquy on jealousy in "Otello," he said: "You're playing this too beautifully. A little bad taste, please!"
Again, the orchestra immediately grasped what he wanted and did it.
Despite his exceptionally high musical standards and the stubbornness with which he insisted on reaching his goals, Kleiber was fundamentally an affable man who would go to extraordinary lengths to avoid hurting the feelings of others.
But when he felt that stage directors, players or singers were thwarting his wishes out of ill will or sluggishness, he could make their lives miserable.
At one opera performance, again at La Scala, he stormed from the podium onto the stage behind the closed curtain at intermission and angrily told the lead baritone that the two would never perform together again.
This so enraged the baritone that a nearby tenor had to keep him from physically assaulting Kleiber.
Kleiber seemed to enjoy life. Fascinating young women (his wife was a Slovenian ballerina) and fast sports cars were particular passions.
But he had no interest in making money by piling up as many engagements as possible.
"Died after a long illness," the newspapers reported, a phrase generally presumed to mean cancer.
But perhaps it was the longer illness of perfectionism - an exceptionally uncommon virus - that really killed Kleiber.
In the end, he acted on his own judgment - "I shouldn't be conducting at all" - by disappearing, leaving the music world a poorer place.
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