On 1 May 2025, the Basilica of Santa Maria de Montserrat hosted a concert performance of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal, conducted by Josep Pons. The event formed part of the Montserrat Millennium Music Festival and was made possible through a collaboration between Montserrat Abbey, the Salvat Foundation and the National Youth Orchestra of Catalonia.
The programme featured the Prelude to Act I and the complete third act of Wagner’s final music drama. The performance brought together the JONC, the Escolania de Montserrat, the Schola Cantorum and the Cor de Cavallers, formed by former members of the Escolania. The cast was led by Nikolai Schukoff as Parsifal, Albert Dohmen as Gurnemanz and José Antonio López as Amfortas, with a brief appearance by Isabelle Cals as Kundry.
The participation of the JONC gave the project particular personal significance. Josep Pons was the orchestra’s founding conductor, leading its artistic development from its creation in 1993 until 2001. His return to the ensemble for a project of this scale connected the educational beginnings of his career with one of the central works of the Wagnerian repertoire.
The choice of Parsifal also reflected the opera’s symbolic association with Montserrat. Through the writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the mountain acquired an important place in the imagination of German Romanticism. This tradition contributed to the later identification of Montserrat with Wagner’s Montsalvat, the sacred castle where the Holy Grail is guarded.
Wagner described Parsifal, his final stage work, as a “sacred festival drama.” Its third act, centred on compassion, redemption and spiritual renewal, acquired particular intensity within the Basilica, where the score entered into a direct dialogue with Montserrat’s setting, monastic tradition and Millennium celebrations.
The event attracted considerable public interest. Almost two thousand people followed the performance: around seven hundred inside the Basilica and more than a thousand through a large screen installed in Plaça de Santa Maria. The concert was also broadcast by La Xarxa de Comunicació Local and streamed through Montserrat Abbey’s YouTube channel.
The performance brought Parsifal for the first time to the mountain traditionally associated with its symbolic world. It became one of the most distinctive musical events of the Montserrat Millennium, uniting Wagner’s music, the education of new generations of musicians and the cultural and spiritual significance of the Abbey.