“I realise I’ve spent half my life living and working in Europe,” says Simone Young with a contemplative tilt of the head and a tone of mild surprise, as if the Sydney-born star conductor has only just come to terms with her career-imposed transience. She takes a house-made grissino – drizzled with olive oil and pungent with garlic – and waves it about like a baton. “Have one,” she insists. “They’re fabulous!”

We’re at a Vienna opera crowd favourite, an Italian place called Sole with a suitably sunny vibe, just a skip and a jump from the venerable state opera house, or Staatsoper. But for “maestra Young”, as the waitstaff address her with Italianate brio, there’s no skipping and jumping today as she hobbles on crutches around the city that was the scene of two great career triumphs. In 1993 Young became the first female conductor of the Vienna State Opera, and 12 years later she broke once again with the country’s deep though staunchly chauvinistic musical traditions when she led the Vienna Philharmonic: the first woman in its storied history to do so.