Philippe Jordan comes from an artistic Swiss family and is one of the most important conductors of his generation. From 2027/28 he will be music director of the Orchestre National de France. From 2020 to 2025 he was general music director of the Vienna State Opera, where he conducted numerous new productions, including Parsifal, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Tristan und Isolde, Salome, Mozart’s Da Ponte operas, Don Carlos and Tannhäuser.
Highlights of the 2025/26 season included performances with the Filarmonica della Scala, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Orchestre National de France (conducting Schumann’s Das Paradies und die Peri), and at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. In the USA he appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Augustin Hadelich and conducted the San Francisco and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestras. His conducting appearances in Asia included concerts with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra and the NHK Symphony Orchestra. He also toured Japan with the Vienna State Opera, conducting Der Rosenkavalier.
He has appeared as a guest artist at leading opera houses and international festivals, including the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, La Scala, Milan, the Bavarian State Opera, the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus and the festivals of Aix-en-Provence, Bayreuth and Glyndebourne. His most recent appearance at the Salzburg Festival was Macbeth in 2025.
He began his career as Kapellmeister at Theater Ulm and at the Berlin State Opera. From 2001 to 2004 he was principal conductor of the Graz Opera, and he returned to the Berlin State Opera from 2006 to 2010 as principal guest conductor. From 2009 to 2021 he was music director of the Paris Opéra, where he conducted operas including Moses und Aron, La Damnation de Faust, Samson et Dalila, Lohengrin, Les Troyens and Borodin’s Prince Igor. In addition, from 2014 to 2020 he was chief conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.
On the concert platform Philippe Jordan has conducted the world’s most prestigious orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Tonhalle Orchestra, Zurich, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic.
In 2022 Philippe Jordan was awarded the Austrian Music Theatre Prize and in January 2026 he received the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, First Class.
