The Community of Madrid will close the first edition of the new festival on Saturday, 19 September Escena Escorial with a sold-out concert by Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in the Teatro Auditorio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial. According to an announcement on 17 September, all tickets have been allocated.
The programme features the Prelude and Liebestod from Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 8, the Unfinished, and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3. The orchestra was founded in 1999 by Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said and is regarded as a leading project for dialogue and understanding across cultural boundaries.
The festival’s inaugural season has been running since late August and, according to the regional government, has brought together more than 200 participants from music, dance, theatre and the contemporary scene. Artistic direction is by Alondra de la Parra. The Saturday finale is accompanied by an additional chamber music evening on Friday, 18 September: the Trio Zénon with Abigél Králik, Lydia Shelley and Emmanuel Christien will perform works by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Maurice Ravel.
The venue San Lorenzo de El Escorial is intended to be further established as a regional performance centre through the new format. In spring 2026, the authorities presented the festival as a complement to existing venues such as the Teatros del Canal . The engagement of Barenboim, whose work is internationally acclaimed, is the most prominent feature of the inaugural edition.
Alongside the finale in El Escorial, Madrid’s theatre programme continues. Teatros del Canal is showing Los locos de Valencia, based on Lope de Vega, in José Luis Alonso de Santos’s version and directed by Pepa Pedroche, until Sunday. Electra jonda, a Teatros del Canal production co-produced with the Festival Internacional de Teatro Clásico de Mérida, is running in Sala Roja Concha Velasco until 18 September. In September, the Teatro de La Abadía is addressing social debates: LIBRES!!! by Andrés Lima, based on a text by Esther F. Carrodeguas, is scheduled in Sala Juan de la Cruz until 11 October, while El imperativo categórico by Victoria Szpunberg is on the programme at Sala José Luis Alonso until 4 October.
This information is based on the Comunidad de Madrid’s announcement and the official programmes of the institutions involved. Assessments of artistic quality and the festival’s broader effects on cultural policy are opinions of third parties and are not part of this report.
Editor: Mira Cadena (Article created with AI assistance).