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Philippe Jordan

About this Artist

Coming from an artistic Swiss family, Philippe Jordan has had a career that has taken him to all the world’s major opera houses, festivals, and orchestras. He is regarded as one of the most established and important conductors of our time.  

He has been Music Director of the Wiener Staatsoper since September 2020 and opened his first season with new productions of Madama Butterfly, Parsifal, and Macbeth alongside revivals of Der Rosenkavalier and Le nozze di Figaro. The 2021/22 season saw further new productions of Don Giovanni, Wozzeck, and Tristan und Isolde. In the current season, he is conducting new productions of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Salome, and Le nozze di Figaro and revivals of Don Giovanni, Der Rosenkavalier, Tristan und Isolde, Wozzeck, and Parsifal 

Guest appearances in the 2022/23 season take him to the Orchestre National de France, Munich Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, and Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. He can be seen with the Vienna Philharmonic in symphonic concerts at the Konzerthaus Wien in the spring of 2023. 

Jordan’s career on the podium began as Kapellmeister at Germany’s Stadttheater Ulm and at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin. From 2001 to 2004, he was principal conductor of the Graz Opera and the Graz Philharmonic Orchestra, during which period he also debuted at several of the world’s leading opera houses and festivals, including Metropolitan Opera; the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; the Teatro alla Scala; the Bavarian State Opera; the Wiener Staatsoper; the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden; and the Aix-en-Provence, Glyndebourne, and Salzburg festivals. From 2006 to 2010, he returned to the Berlin State Opera as principal guest conductor. In the summer of 2012, he debuted at the Bayreuth Festival with Parsifal, returning again in 2017 with Bayreuth’s new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, which he also conducted in subsequent years.  

Jordan was musical director of the Opéra National de Paris between 2009 and 2021, during which time he conducted numerous premieres and revivals, including Moses und Aron, La damnation de Faust, Der Rosenkavalier, Samson et Dalila, Lohengrin, Don Carlos (in its original French version), Les Troyens, Don Giovanni, a new production of Borodin’s Prince Igor, and Wagner’s Ring cycle in a concert version.  

From 2014 to 2020, Jordan served as principal conductor of the Wiener Symphoniker. Highlights of his tenure with the orchestra include complete cycles of Schubert’s symphonies and Beethoven’s symphonies and piano concertos, a cycle of J.S. Bach’s masses and oratorios, and a contrast-filled dialogue of Bruckner´s last three symphonies with modern classics by Kurtág, Ligeti, and Scelsi. 

As a symphonic conductor, Philippe Jordan has worked with the world’s most famous orchestras, including the Berliner and Wiener Philharmoniker, Münchner Philharmoniker, Wiener Symphoniker, London Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, Tonhalle Orchester Zürich, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, Israel Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, and the symphony orchestras of Boston, Seattle, Saint Louis, Dallas, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Washington, Minnesota, Montreal, and San Francisco.