Dominique Meyer, the Director of the Vienna State Opera, has finally broken his silence following the sudden and publically acrimonious resignation of maestro Bertrand De Billy last week. De Billy quit just one week after the similarly abrupt departure of the Opera’s principal conductor Franz Welser-Möst but Meyer has accused the French conductor of having effectively thrown in the towel over a year ago.

Losing two high profile and internationally in-demand conductors in such a short amount of time has been a source of embarrassment and controversy for the State Opera, with replacements for many of the upcoming performances still to be announced. Despite an otherwise successful past season at the Staatsoper, with full houses and glowing reviews, Meyer’s reputation has been badly tarnished by a PR disaster, which was ignited after De Billy launched a scathing attack on the Director in an interview with the Kurier Newspaper on September 16.

Responding to claims of “disloyalty” and a failure to “support” De Billy, Meyer said “I cannot understand these insulting allegations”. In a probing interview with Profil Magazine (given in German with excerpts translated here), Meyer claims De Billy “threw in the towel” following an irreconcilable disagreement during...