The Bayreuth Festival Orchestra will embark on a major tour across Spain in the summer of 2026, conducted by Pablo Heras-Casado. The project celebrates the 150th anniversary of the Bayreuth Festival and the 40th anniversary of the Festival Castell de Peralada, which hosted the official presentation of the tour earlier this week.
The announcement, made at the Castell de Peralada, brought together Katharina Wagner, great-granddaughter of Richard Wagner and director of the Bayreuth Festival, and Pablo Heras-Casado, the Spanish conductor who will lead the orchestra. They were joined by representatives of the main institutions participating in the project: Oriol Aguilà (Festival Perelada), Joan Oller (Palau de la Música Catalana), Joan Matabosch (Teatro Real), Javier Menéndez (Teatro de la Maestranza), Cosme Marina (Festival Internacional de Santander), and Vicente Llimerá (Palau de la Música de València, attending online).
The tour will begin on 29 August 2026 at the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona—as part of the closing celebrations for the 40th anniversary of the Festival Perelada—and continue through Madrid, Sevilla, Santander, and València, with the possibility of additional stops still to be announced.
During the presentation, Katharina Wagner highlighted the symbolic importance of the project, calling it “an honour” for the Bayreuth Festival and recalling the long Wagnerian tradition in Spain. She also revealed that the tour will offer “a preview” of the new Ring cycle to be staged at Bayreuth in 2028: “Spain will have the first glimpse,” she said.
For Pablo Heras-Casado, the opportunity to lead the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra—whose musicians come from some of the world’s finest ensembles and gather exclusively for the annual festival—is “a privilege”. The conductor, who made his Bayreuth debut in 2023 with Parsifal, described the ensemble as “a legendary orchestra of exceptional technical level and deep understanding of the repertoire.”
According to the organisers, the programme will feature selections from Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen: Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung. The event marks the orchestra’s first return to Spain in 14 years and is expected to be one of the most significant cultural highlights of 2026.
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