April 7 (Bloomberg) -- Ticket prices surge to 260 euros ($320) a seat and an international crowd swishes to the Staatsoper Unter den Linden for the Festtage, an Easter festival where the music of Richard Wagner tops the bill and the art of Daniel Barenboim draws the crowds.

This year, Barenboim, 63, is busy every night. First, he conducts theater director Stefan Bachmann's new production of ``Tristan und Isolde,'' next a revival of last year's ``Parsifal'' staging, then a concert of the prestigious Staatskapelle orchestra. That will be followed by two piano recitals in which he will play J.S. Bach's ``Well-Tempered Clavier.'' In between, there's the usual round of press conferences, interviews, receptions and dinners.

Barenboim, who has been general music director of the Staatsoper since 1992, is well aware of the anomaly of his role as the world's leading Jewish interpreter of the music of one of history's most notorious anti-Semites. He caused a furor in 2001 by breaking Israel's informal 50-year ban on the music of Wagner. The occasion was a Staatskapelle tour, when they performed an encore of the prelude and Liebestod from ``Tristan und Isolde.''

Nazi Associations

``There is nothing anti-Semitic in the music,'' says Barenboim vehemently, fresh from one of the final Festtage Wagner rehearsals. ``It's not because of Wagner's anti-Semitism that the music is not played in Israel. It's because of the associations that were created by the Nazis. They used and abused the music of Wagner.

``I agree that people who suffer from this association and who are uncomfortable hearing this music should not be faced with it,'' he says. ``But I do not think that they should stop other people hearing the music.''

Barenboim, the Argentine-born son of Russian-Jewish parents, spent his teenage years in Israel and retains close ties there. His West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, founded in 1999, brings together young Israeli and Arab musicians every summer for rehearsals in Seville and performances around the world.

His concerts in the Palestinian West Bank city of Ramallah, both as a soloist and with the orchestra, grabbed attention. He has founded a music-education program in Ramallah, and is a frequent critic of Israeli-Arab conflicts.

`Dirty Affair'

Despite his work for peace through music, the Wagner episode continues to dog him.

``It was a very dirty affair,'' he says. ``And I'm frankly getting tired of it. It's now five years since it happened, and everybody talked about it as if it was a big scandal. There was no scandal. There were 3,000 people in the hall. I talked to them for 45 minutes. About 100 of them left. That was all. But the next day the president of the state of Israel and these people from the government insulted me; they made a big incident of something which was not there.''

Barenboim is not, he emphasizes, a political person.

``I have no contact with politicians,'' he says. ``I frankly do not care less. But I do care about the problems of injustice. The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra brings Israelis and Arabs together, but it's not political at all. It's not going to bring peace. Even so, the orchestra has changed the life of everybody who has been involved with it. At best, it can help the young people listen to each other, to accept the legitimacy of other narratives.

``Music is the art of integration, from the first moment. If you cannot integrate harmony, rhythm and melody, you cannot play music.''

Opera Renovation

On May 12, Barenboim will be awarded the Ernst von Siemens music prize in a Vienna ceremony. He will donate most of the award -- 100,000 euros -- toward the renovation of the Berlin Staatsoper and the remaining 50,000 euros to the music kindergarten he has founded in Berlin.

``This is not even a little drop of water in the sea,'' he says. ``One hundred thousand euros in a project which will cost 130 million euros is nothing. My contribution is basically to wake people up. The Staatsoper needs to be renovated. The whole technical construction backstage must be replaced. We need facilities for rehearsing. The conditions here are actually impossible.''

Nobody disagrees with Barenboim's claim that the Staatsoper, first built in 1742, urgently needs restoration. Yet in a city so bankrupt that all the opera houses are being asked to trim spending, the matter of an extra 130 million euros remains problematic.

``The important thing now is that the federal government has understood that this building is a great historical and architectural monument, and that therefore it is the responsibility of the federal government as well as of the city of Berlin,'' says Barenboim.

Investing in Music

The private sector has stepped in, too, with Berlin businessman Peter Dussmann of Dussmann AG announcing that he aims to raise 30 million euros for the renovation. Barenboim says he hopes that Dussmann's venture will inspire sponsors from further afield to join the project.

As for the other 50,000 euro donation, it is part of Barenboim's investment in a future audience for the opera.

``Music used to be an organic part of cultural education,'' he says. ``Today, that is not the case. The connection between music and other aspects of culture has been lost. We have to win that back.''

Barenboim is the BBC's Reith Lecturer for 2006. In the series of talks, he argues that music lies at the heart of our understanding of what it means to be human and that it offers a way of making sense of the world.

``Notoriety is not about looking in the mirror every day before I go to sleep and saying, `Isn't it wonderful! I am world famous! I can play wherever I like and people will come to hear me!' That would be stupid,'' he says. ``But if I have achieved a certain notoriety, it is a chance to speak to many people, and it is my duty to speak about the things that are really important to me.''

The Festtage Easter festival runs through April 16.

To contact the reporter on this story: Shirley Apthorp at Sarabande@compuserve.com.

Last Updated: April 6, 2006 21:10 EDT