Wagner Festival

The season‘s first subscription concert is a true Wagner Feast, as Ólafur Kjartan Sigurðarson sings majestic arias from some of Richard Wagner's most beloved operas and the orchestra performs some of the most captivating overtures of the German master under the baton of Eva Ollikainen, Chief Conductor of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra.

Long since established as a world-class interpreter of Wagner, Ólafur Kjartan Sigurðarson is the Iceland Symphony Orchestra's artist in residence this season. He has sung leading roles in Wagner's operas in many of the world's top opera houses, including the prestigious Bayreuth Festival in Germany, founded by Wagner himself in 1876 to showcase his own works. Ólafur Kjartan will be arriving on the back of his fourth summer stint in Bayreuth when he takes to the stage with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra to perform Wagner's music.

Richard Wagner was a true revolutionary in the realm of opera and had a profound impact on the history of music. His influence is still felt today in symphonic music and opera, as well as music for films and video games. Wagner transformed the texture of the opera form, integrating singing and orchestral accompaniment into a unified whole. He developed concepts such as the Leitmotif, where musical themes represent characters or phenomena. Wagner viewed opera as a holistic artwork, Gesamtkunstwerk, where all art forms converge. He wrote the librettos, or scripts, for his operas himself, often drawing on ancient Germanic legends. The fascinating subjects—heroes, warriors and valkyries—continue to attract new audiences to his operas, as does the irresistible music.