So the next Vienna Opera music director will be …

Philippe Jordan’s weekend declaration that he will quit the Vienna Sate Opera no later than 2025 suggests that communication has broken down – again – between the director on the top floor and the conductor in the pit.

Much the same happened with Franz Welser-Möst in 2014 and, before that, with Claudio Abbado in 1991. Musical considerations are never going to be uppermost in a house that depends on passing tourist trade and transient political connections.

Still there will be no shortage of applicants for the vacant music director’s post. Bogdan Roščić will already have put in a call to his former Sony artist Teodor Currentzis, a timely call since Currentzis has just lost his job in Stuttgart. Christian Thielemann will be next on his list (he will refuse) and there is no shortage of mid-career maestros who will want to add Gustav Mahler’s old job to their CVs.

But the job these days is worthless. The music director’s wishes go unheeded. The programme is all Schein and no Sein – all for show and no existential substance.

Currentzis, come to think of it, could be ideal.