Philippe Jordan

Swiss conductor Philippe Jordan, regarded as one of today’s most established and important conductors, makes his Boston Symphony Orchestra debut this week. Mr. Jordan’s career has taken him to all the world’s major opera houses, festivals. He has been music director of the Vienna State Opera since September 2020 and in his first season he gave the premieres of new productions of Madama Butterfly, Parsifal, and Macbeth beside revivals of Der Rosenkavalier and The Marriage of Figaro. This season he premieres new productions of Don Giovanni, Wozzeck, and Tristan and conducts revivals of Parsifal, Rosenkavalier, and Capriccio. Mr. Jordan’s career on the podium began as Kapellmeister at Germany’s Theater Ulm and at the Berlin State Opera. From 2001 to 2004, he was principal conductor of Graz Opera and the Graz Philharmonic Orchestra in Austria. During this period, he also debuted at several of the world’s leading opera houses and festivals, including the Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera House—Covent Garden, Teatro alla Scala, Bavarian State Opera, Vienna State Opera, and Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, and the festivals of Aix-en-Provence, Glyndebourne, and Salzburg. From 2006 to 2010 he returned to the Berlin State Opera as principal guest conductor. In summer 2012 he debuted at the Bayreuth Festival with Parsifal, which he followed up in 2017 with Bayreuth’s new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, which he repeated in 2018 and 2019. Mr. Jordan was music director of the Opéra national de Paris between 2009 and 2021, where he conducted numerous premieres and revivals, including Moses und Aron, La Damnation de Faust, Der Rosenkavalier, Samson et Dalila, Lohengrin, Don Carlos, Les Troyens, Don Giovanni, Prince Igor, and the Ring cycle in a concert version. Mr. Jordan was principal conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra from 2014 to 2020. Together with the orchestra, he developed complete cycles of Schubert’s symphonies and Beethoven’s symphonies and piano concertos, a cycle of J. S. Bach’s major masses and oratorios, and a three-part Bruckner project, in which the composer’s last three symphonies were presented in contrasting dialogue with classic works of the modern period by Kurtág, Ligeti, and Scelsi. In the symphonic field Mr. Jordan has conducted the world’s most famous orchestras. His orchestral conducting engagements this season include the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, and Webern Symphony Orchestra.

Last updated: February 9, 2022