TEL AVIV, Israel, July 25 (UPI) -- The Israel Chamber Orchestra has been booked to perform music by Richard Wagner at Germany's Bayreuth Festival, organizers said.
The British newspaper The Daily Telegraph called Tuesday's planned performance historic, adding Israel has observed an informal ban on the composer's music since the country was established in 1948.
Wagner's anti-Semitic writings are credited for having partially inspired German dictator Adolf Hitler's quest for racial purity, an endeavor that resulted in the genocide of millions of Jews during World War II.
The orchestra is expected to play "Siegfried Idyll" at the Bavarian festival. The musicians will be led by conductor Roberto Paternostro, who emphasized Wagner's ideology was "terrible," but the aim of their performance of his music was "to divide the man from his art," the newspaper said.
