The Gran Teatre del Liceu has announced that it will stage a new production of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen beginning in the 2026/27 season, unfolding across four consecutive seasons until 2029/30.
The project is a co-production with the Bayerische Staatsoper, where the cycle began in October 2024 with the premiere of Das Rheingold. The remaining instalments — Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung — are being rolled out gradually in Munich, meaning the full tetralogy has not yet premiered there.
In Barcelona, each part will be presented in January and February from 2027 to 2030, with the theatre indicating that a consistent core group of singers will accompany the project throughout the four seasons.
Jonathan Nott’s first Ring as music director
For Jonathan Nott, who is set to assume the position of music director at the Liceu, the project represents his fourth engagement with Wagner’s tetralogy and his third in staged form. He has described the Ring as “four movements of a great symphony”, emphasising the structural continuity of the fifteen-hour work and the inseparability of music and drama in Wagner’s conception.
Nott has indicated that his approach seeks epic scale through harmonic density rather than sheer orchestral weight, aiming to construct a three-dimensional sound world in which leitmotifs function as narrative forces that guide the listener across the vast span of the cycle.
The Barcelona performances will mark his first Ring as head of a major opera house, positioning the tetralogy as a defining artistic statement for his tenure.
Tobias Kratzer’s staging: religion, power and mortality
Director Tobias Kratzer, internationally recognised following his production of Tannhäuser at the Bayreuth Festival, will make his debut at the Liceu with this cycle. From the 2025/26 season, he assumes the artistic directorship of the Hamburgische Staatsoper.
In Das Rheingold, Kratzer foregrounds religion as a central theme, exploring questions of power, mortality and immortality. His reading contrasts Wotan’s struggle with eternal existence with Alberich’s awareness of human finitude, and connects the tetralogy to the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, particularly the tension surrounding the notion of divine death.
According to the creative team, the staging situates Wagner’s mythic drama in a parallel universe that reflects contemporary psychology and technology while preserving its magical dimension.
From Castellucci to Kratzer
The Liceu had initially planned to present the Ring in a production by Romeo Castellucci, previously staged at La Monnaie. The suspension of that project led the Barcelona house to pursue the current co-production with Munich.
The theatre last presented a complete Ring between the 2012/13 and 2015/16 seasons, in a staging by Robert Carsen conducted by Josep Pons. An earlier cycle was mounted in 2002/03 and 2003/04 under Harry Kupfer with musical direction by Bertrand de Billy.
With this announcement, the Liceu aligns itself with one of the most ambitious Wagner projects currently unfolding in Europe — not as the originator of a new Ring cycle, but as a partner in a multi-season production that will continue to develop in parallel in Munich and Barcelona through the end of the decade.
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