Deutsche Grammophon release on 28.6.2024, return to Bayreuth in July and August 2024
With his “triumphant debut” (BR-Klassik) in Bayreuth in 2023, Pablo Heras-Casado made big waves that are still seething today. Recordings of the acclaimed Parsifal production under the musical direction of the Spanish conductor will be released on June 28, 2024 in various audio and video formats by Deutsche Grammophon and confirm: Pablo Heras-Casado is one of the most influential Wagner conductors of his generation.
Pablo Heras-Casado could not have wished for a better debut in Bayreuth. Last year, the conductor was showered with praise by critics for his sensitive and historically informed artistic vision in Wagner’s Parsifal as part of the 2023 Festival. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung paid tribute to Pablo Heras-Casado’s “impressive Bayreuth debut … The Spanish conductor literally seduces you into listening – with an orchestral and dynamic delicacy that is unparalleled and at the same time reveals his stylistic confidence honed by historical performance practice.” It was “one of the most remarkable Bayreuth debuts of recent years”, according to Die Welt. And according to BR-Klassik, Heras-Casado does not have to shy away from comparison with the competition: “What more famous conductors have repeatedly failed to achieve, [Heras-Casado] succeeds at the first attempt: that the orchestra, singers and the fantastic choir really breathe together.”
It is no coincidence that this production marks the first time in ten years that a Bayreuth recording has been released on CD, as Heras-Casado’s artistic partners – director Jay Scheib, mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča and tenor Andreas Schager – were also praised by audiences and critics for an overall performance that was “visually avant-garde, but at the same time powerful” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). On June 28, 2024, the audio and video recordings of the production will be released by Deutsche Grammophon, as a 4-CD set, on Blu-Ray and digitally.
Pablo Heras-Casado is delighted that this release will now give a wider audience the opportunity to hear and see Parsifal: “As his last musico-dramatic work – basically his last testament – Parsifal plays a very important role in Wagner’s oeuvre. Parsifal can also be described as a particularly pure, essential Wagner work – also on a spiritual level. It is of unique beauty and, especially in the way it plays with its own texture and spatiality, it offers something completely new for its time. It is and was a great honor for me to conduct Parsifal in Bayreuth.”
Pablo Heras-Casado is now regarded as one of the most exciting Wagner conductors of our time. He recently conducted Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the Teatro Real in Madrid, directed by Laurent Pelly. In July and August, Heras-Casado will once again conduct Parsifal in Bayreuth. Next year, his journey will take him to Paris for a new Ring des Nibelungen in collaboration with Calixto Bieito. And in April 2025, Berlin audiences will also be able to get their own impression of Heras-Casado’s sensitivity for Wagner: in a new production of The Flying Dutchman at the Berlin State Opera.