Lots of maestros decry Regietheater, which is to say the tyranny of crackpot directors, but mostly they do so in private. In the fall, Philippe Jordan blew the whistle publicly in a scorching interview, announcing at the same time that he would not be renewing his contract as music director of the Vienna State Opera when it expires in 2025. The company’s general director Bogdan Roščić then piped up to contradict him: Jordan had been advised, Roščić said, that management would not be renewing his contract for unstated reasons of their own. Plainly, the match between these gentlemen was not made in heaven. Class act that he is, Jordan refrained from naming names, but from where we sit, there’s no question that he’s fighting the good fight. A serious and a committed artist, he delivers at his frequent best richly realized performances of great sweep and refinement. With this new production of Richard Wagner’s midsummer comedy Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, he’s in his element. And happily, the director Keith Warner is one of the more responsible practitioners in the business. Here’s hoping for harmony.
—Matthew Gurewitsch