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Each year, the Festival international de Colmar transforms the city’s most distinguished heritage venues into vibrant stages for world-class soloists and leading ensembles. Since 2023, the festival has been under the artistic direction of Alain Altinoglu.
For the 2026 edition, our Music Director and the La Monnaie Orchestra present two exceptional concert evenings, on 5 and 6 July.
The opening concert begins with the electrifying “Ride of the Valkyries” from Die Walküre by Richard Wagner. South African soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha then takes the stage in Richard Strauss’ Vier letzte Lieder, one of the most radiant and moving song cycles in the repertoire, before the evening culminates in Strauss’s monumental tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra.
The second concert takes audiences on a musical journey from the banks of the Seine to the Norwegian fjords. Or, musically speaking, from the vibrant Carnaval romain by Hector Berlioz and the First Cello Concerto by Camille Saint-Saëns — performed by cellist Edgar Moreau — to Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt, featuring some of the repertoire’s most beloved melodies, including “Morning Mood” and “In the Hall of the Mountain King”.