Summer Festival Baden-Baden ''La Capitale d'Ét'' 2026
About
The Summer Festival at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden will be led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, chief conductor of New York’s Metropolitan Opera. He regularly stands on the podium of the world’s most prominent orchestras – and reveals that he is also a passionate chamber musician, performing with friends from the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.
The Enlightenment celebrated the "aha moment." A whispered "ah!" sufficed for the Romantics. A loving gaze, sunlight in the morning dew – an expression of wonder when the world shows itself from an unexpected side. Immortalized in notes: the horn call in Schubert's “Great” Symphony in C major or the pedal solo of the invisible organ that opens the "Unfinished." Yannick Nézet-Séguin is devoting the first half of the Summer Festival to this kind of Romantic magic – together with renowned soloists and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. The artists will present music by Weber, Mendelssohn, and Schubert in its truest light – sometimes dazzling, more often muted. For lovers of grand musical cathedrals, the London Symphony Orchestra performs music by Wagner and Rachmaninoff. And finally a joyous "ah!" and "oh!" – at the meeting of the starsfeaturing Zubin Mehta, Daniel Hope, and Pinchas Zukerman.
About the Festival Baden-Baden
Festspiel Baden-Baden (Baden-Baden Festival) is a series of festivals presented by the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden in Baden-Baden, Germany. The programme is structured around five annual festival periods dispersed throughout the year. The Easter, Whitsun, Summer, Autumn and Winter Festivals each incorporate at least one opera production and several classical concerts.
A typical year contains four festivals of one week each:
Autumn Festival in early October.
Winter Festival from mid-January.
Easter Festival during Holy Week.
Herbert von Karajan Whitsun Festival in late May to early June.
Summer Festival from early July.
Major opera productions at Festspielhaus Baden-Baden to date include La traviata (Valery Gergiev, conductor / Philippe Arlaud, director, 2001), Fidelio (Simone Young, conductor / Philippe Arlaud, director, 2002), Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Marc Minkowski, conductor / Macha Makeïeff and Jérôme Deschamps, directors, 2003), The Ring of the Nibelung (Valery Gergiev, musical direction and concept / George Tsypin, stage design, 2003/2004), Rigoletto (Thomas Hengelbrock, conductor / Philippe Arlaud, director, 2004), Parsifal (Kent Nagano, conductor / Nikolaus Lehnhoff, director, 2004) and Die Zauberflöte (Claudio Abbado, conductor / Daniele Abbado, director, 2005).
