On 25 January 2024, the Ópera XXI Awards announced that Josep Pons had received the Award for Musical Direction for his interpretation of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal at the Gran Teatre del Liceu during the 2022/23 season. The distinction formed part of the sixth edition of Spain’s principal national awards devoted to opera and lyric theatre.
The opera had been presented between 25 May and 7 June 2023 in Claus Guth’s production, a co-production between the Gran Teatre del Liceu and Zurich Opera first seen in Barcelona in 2011. The staging relocated the drama to a military sanatorium in the aftermath of the First World War, exploring the physical, spiritual and social wounds of its characters.
The cast brought together leading Wagnerian singers, with Nikolai Schukoff as Parsifal, Elena Pankratova as Kundry, René Pape as Gurnemanz, Matthias Goerne as Amfortas and Evgeny Nikitin as Klingsor. The performances also featured the Gran Teatre del Liceu Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, joined by the Palau de la Música Catalana Chamber Choir and the Amics de la Unió Children’s Choir.
Leading the theatre’s musical forces, Josep Pons approached one of Wagner’s longest and most demanding scores, a work requiring exceptional control of musical time, large-scale architecture and the balance between soloists, chorus and orchestra. Critics praised the strength of the interpretation, the quality of the ensemble and his ability to sustain the drama’s vast structure without sacrificing clarity or expressive tension.
The award also recognised more than a decade of artistic development with the Gran Teatre del Liceu Symphony Orchestra and the consolidation of Wagner’s repertoire as one of the central strands of the musical project launched in 2012.
The award was formally presented on 22 October 2024 at Madrid’s Teatro de la Zarzuela, during the sixth Ópera XXI Awards ceremony.