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The ad-hoc festival began with a celebration of the Industry, the most impressive opera lab in America, and a wave goodbye to its founder, Yuval Sharon, who has taken the revolution to Detroit Opera, where he is artistic director, and to the Metropolitan Opera, where he will face the greatest challenge of his career attempting to mend the company’s old Wagnerian ways with radical new productions of “Tristan und Isolde” and the “Ring” cycle.

In Jerusalem in 2001, he provoked controversy by conducting the Prelude to the opera Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner at the Israel Festival.

He’s set to make his debut with the company next season with a new production of “Tristan und Isolde.”

He accepted the Metropolitan Opera’s invitation to direct the upcoming Wagner productions of “Tristan und Isolde” and the “Ring” cycle.

Sharon also will direct a new production of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” in 2026.