Where Pappano goes next

We’ve been hearing for a while that Sir Antonio Pappano will not conduct Covent Garden into the 2020s. He has been music director for 15 years, is 57 years old and he tells the Times today that it could be time to move on.

But where?

Reports that he is being considered to succeed Kirill Petrenko at Bavarian State Opera have been firmly quashed. Munich’s next music director will be appointed in tandem with whoever succeeds Niklaus Bachler as intendant.

Vienna has a music director vacancy at the state opera, but Pappano is a team player and the incoming intendant, Bogdan Roscic, is not.

There are no obvious vacancies in the US at the moment.

Mortality may create one somewhere but, for the moment, Pappano may choose to relax for a couple of years as a guest conductor while surveying a congested field.