Philippe Jordan

Philippe Jordan comes from an artistic Swiss family, and is one of today’s most renowned conductors. Since September 2020 he has been music director of the Vienna State Opera, where he opened his first season with new productions of Madama Butterfly, Parsifal and Macbeth, and revivals of Der Rosenkavalier and Le nozze di Figaro. New productions of Don Giovanni, Wozzeck and Tristan und Isolde followed in 2021/22. In the 2022/23 season he conducted new productions of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Salome and Le nozze di Figaro, along with revivals of Don Giovanni, Der Rosenkavalier, Tristan und Isolde, Wozzeck and Parsifal.
Recent concert guest appearances have included performances with the Orchestre National de France, the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. In spring 2023 he appeared with the Vienna Philharmonic at the Vienna Konzerthaus.
He began his career aged 20, as Kapellmeister at Ulm Theatre and at the Berlin State Opera. From 2001 to 2004 he was principal conductor at the Graz Opera; during this time he made his debuts at opera houses including the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, La Scala, Milan, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the Vienna State Opera, the Zurich Opera House and at the Baden-Baden, Aix-en-Provence, Glyndebourne and Salzburg Festivals. From 2006 to 2010 he returned to the Berlin State Opera as principal guest conductor. He made his debut at the Bayreuth Festival in the summer of 2012 with Parsifal, returning in 2017 for Barrie Kosky’s new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
From 2009 to 2021 Philippe Jordan was music director of the Paris Opéra, where he conducted numerous new productions and revivals, among them Moses und Aron, La Damnation de Faust, Der Rosenkavalier, Samson et Dalila, Lohengrin, the original French version of Don Carlos, Les Troyens, Don Giovanni, a new production of Borodin’s Prince Igor and concert performances of Der Ring des Nibelungen.
From 2014 to 2020 he was chief conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, for which orchestra he conducted cycles of Schubert’s symphonies, Beethoven’s symphonies and piano concertos and Bach’s great masses and oratorios, and performances of Bruckner’s last three symphonies placed alongside works by Kurtág, Ligeti and Scelsi in the Vienna Musikverein.
As a symphonic conductor, Philippe Jordan has worked with the world’s most prestigious orchestras, among them the Berlin Philharmonic, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and the Symphony Orchestras of Boston, Seattle, St Louis, Dallas, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Washington, Montreal, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco.