The controversial Katharina Wagner presents an "exceptional" tour that will start in Barcelona

Barcelona"The sound of the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra is unique in itself, and we must add to it the sonority of the theatre's pit where it usually plays," comments Katharina Wagner (Bayreuth, 1978), great-granddaughter of the composer of the tetralogy The Ring of the Nibelung and controversial stage director, who has found a gap in her extremely tight schedule – the 150th edition of the Bayreuth Festival, which she currently directs, kicked off on July 24 – to visit the Palau de la Música Catalana, where she has presented the "exceptional" tour that will begin in Barcelona on August 29. This is a co-production between the Palau and the Peralada Festival, which this year celebrates its fortieth anniversary.

The concert, conducted by Pablo Heras-Casado, will be the first of the five dates the ensemble will offer in Spain, bringing together musicians from all over the world only during the summer. "This is the first time the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra has undertaken such a tour, and it will not be easy for it to be repeated —Wagner continued solemnly—. If it has been possible, it is because we know that there is a great Wagnerian tradition here, and that will make the concerts have a devoted audience." The orchestra, which will perform "a selection of the most emblematic moments" from The Ring of the Nibelung, is made up of 95 musicians and three performers as accomplished as Catherine Foster, Klaus Florian Vogt, and Nicholas Brownlee, conducted by Heras-Casado, "one of the most recognized international batons today," recalls Joan Oller, general director of the Palau de la Música. "Pablo Heras-Casado already conducted all four parts of The Ring of the Nibelung at the Teatro Real in Madrid [between 2018 and 2022] and will be in charge of a new production of the tetralogy in Bayreuth, scheduled for 2028," advanced Katharina Wagner with a smile, perhaps motivated by the anniversary that singles out this year's edition of the Bayreuth Festival: "Right now, a festival like ours does not have to fight for artistic freedom, but for money; therefore, it is relatively easy for us to survive. From the festival, we have decided that from next year we will move forward with not one, but two new productions. Times are changing and we must also change with strategies like this. Also by investing in the educational program. It is important to bring new generations to music in general, not just to Wagner's."

From the Liceu to the Palau

Katharina Wagner has arrived in Barcelona in a conciliatory tone after the controversy that surrounded the staging of Lohengrin that she directed in March 2025 at the Liceu. At that time, Wagner's great-granddaughter did not attend the press conference due to "artistic discrepancies" with the Swedish soprano Iréne Theorin, who did not sing on the premiere night. Katharina Wagner's peculiar reinterpretation of Lohengrin, in which instead of being a knight touched by the grace of the Grail, he hid a terrible murder, received some negative reviews and temporarily reopened the debate on changes that overturn the meaning of operas, books, and films. It was not the first time the composer's great-granddaughter had transformed a work by Richard Wagner: already in her Bayreuth debut in 2007, she dared to offer an ironic, modern, and controversial version of The Mastersingers of Nuremberg, presenting Beckmesser, a pedantic and immobile bureaucrat, as an innovative character.

The Bayreuth Festival Orchestra will visit Barcelona for the third time. "The first was in 1955, and the second in 2012, and on both occasions the concert was held at the Liceu – explains Joan Matabosch, director of the Teatro Real in Madrid, the venue for the fourth concert of the tour, scheduled for September 3rd. In Madrid, tickets have flown; as of now, there are fewer than 40 left." In Barcelona, the orchestra will play at the Palau de la Música. Katharina Wagner has avoided referring to the change of venue. Oriol Aguilà, director of the Peralada Festival, has done so: "When we started looking at venues in Barcelona, we were excited for it to be the Palau de la Música Catalana, which has a set of Wagnerian Valkyries on its stage [sculpted by Dídac Massana and Pau Gargallo]. The Liceu was not feasible because in August it is in a technical shutdown period." Joan Oller also recalls that the four busts of composers at the Palau de la Música are of "Palestrina, Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner," that "the Orfeó Català has sung Wagner's repertoire since its beginnings," and that as early as 1913 "a Wagner festival was held at the Palau."

If the tour of the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra has been possible and begins in Catalonia, it was due to the proposal that Oriol Aguilà made to Katharina Wagner in 2021. "It was during the intermission of a performance of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg —he recalled today—. I asked her, informally, if the orchestra would return to our home one day, and she said whenever we wanted. We chose precisely 2026, an important year for both Bayreuth and Peralada". After passing through the Palau de la Música Catalana on August 29, the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra will perform at the Santander International Festival (August 31), at the Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville (September 2), at the Teatro Real in Madrid (September 3) and at the Palau de la Música in Valencia (September 6). "It will be one of the most relevant events of the summer in all of Spain", recognizes Vicente Guimerà, director of the Valencian institution, and to his enthusiasm is added that of Oriol Aguilà, Joan Matabosch and Joan Oller. Even that of Katharina Wagner, who is about to return to Bayreuth.