Most mentions of Julián Gayarre stop at the same two facts: a shepherd’s son from the Roncal valley became one of the most celebrated opera tenors of the nineteenth century, and he died young, in 1890, not long after his voice failed on stage in Madrid. That is the whole story in almost every English-language source that mentions him at all, usually as a paragraph inside a piece about the Roncal valley’s cheese or its Pyrenean geography. It is accurate. It is also missing the part that actually explains why Gayarre still matters to Pamplona today.
In 1903, thirteen years after he died, Pamplona renamed its own main civic theater after him. That theater still operates under his name, on Avenida Carlos III, and in June 2025 it hosted Spain’s most prestigious performing arts awards for the first time the ceremony had ever been held anywhere in Navarra. Ernest Hemingway complained about the building in print. And Gayarre’s own death was not a vague illness: he was one of the documented casualties of the 1889 to 1890 Russian flu, the first pandemic of the modern era to circle the globe by rail and steamship. None of that is a footnote to a cheese article. It is the reason a Roncal valley shepherd’s name is still on a building in the middle of Pamplona, more than 130 years after he last sang a note.
This account draws on the Fundación Julián Gayarre’s own published chronology, the Teatro Gayarre’s institutional history, the Ayuntamiento de Pamplona’s tourism records, a detailed Diario de Noticias de Navarra investigation into the medical circumstances of his death, and English-language sources cross-checked against each of those, rather than a single secondhand summary.
From a Roncal Sheep Pasture to the World’s Opera Houses
Sebastián Julián Gayarre Garjón was born on 9 January 1844 in Roncal, in the Navarrese Pyrenees, to a shepherd family. He left school at 13 to herd sheep himself, and at 15 his father sent him to Pamplona to work in a shop, where he heard live music for the first time. He later worked as a blacksmith, first in Lumbier and then back in Pamplona, and it was a coworker at the forge who noticed his voice and pushed him toward the Orfeón Pamplonés, the city’s choral society. There, composer and conservatory teacher Hilarión Eslava heard him sing and arranged a scholarship to Madrid’s Royal Conservatory.
The path from there was not smooth. Spain’s 1868 revolution eliminated the conservatory’s funded positions, and Gayarre returned to Roncal briefly, penniless. A benefit recital organized by his own admirers in Pamplona, followed by a grant of 6,000 reales from the Diputación Foral de Navarra, sent him to Milan in 1869 to study with Giuseppe Gerli. It was in Milan that he dropped his first name, Sebastián, and became simply Julián.
The rest of his career reads as a tour of every major opera house in Europe and the Americas. He created the role of Marcello in Donizetti’s Il Duca d’Alba in Rome in 1871 and Enzo in Ponchielli’s La Gioconda at La Scala in 1876, the same year critics there declared, after an initially cool reception, that Milan had witnessed “the consecration of a genius of singing.” He sang at Covent Garden, the Paris Opéra, and the Teatro Real in Madrid, toured St. Petersburg and Vienna, and crossed the Atlantic to open a season at Buenos Aires’ Teatro Colón in 1876. In March 1881, singing Lohengrin at the Teatro Real, he became the first artist to perform there under electric light. He never stopped returning home either: he attended San Fermín in Pamplona in July 1882 alongside fellow Navarrese virtuoso Pablo Sarasate, and in 1887 he personally funded and inaugurated a frontón, a pelota court, for Roncal and began building the village’s schools.
The Last Note and a Pandemic Nobody Mentions
Gayarre’s final performance came on 8 December 1889 at the Teatro Real in Madrid, in Bizet’s Les pêcheurs de perles (The Pearl Fishers), a role he had carried there since its Spanish premiere earlier that year. Mid-aria, on Nadir’s romance “Je crois entendre encore,” his voice cracked. He is reported to have murmured “No puedo cantar más,” I cannot sing anymore, and left the stage. A sympathetic audience called him back for a bow, where he was heard to say, “Esto se acabó.” This is over.
What almost no account, in Spanish or English, connects explicitly is what killed him 25 days later. A detailed investigation published by Diario de Noticias de Navarra, drawing on Gayarre’s own contemporary letters and correspondence between his cousin Gregorio Garjón and his biographer Julio Enciso, documents that Gayarre fell seriously ill in Madrid in late December 1889, in the middle of the same influenza epidemic then sweeping the Spanish capital, popularly called “la gripe” or “el trancazo.” Multiple members of his own household, and more than one doctor summoned to treat him, were themselves sick with the same outbreak at the same time. His official death certificate lists the cause as bronconeumonía gripal, influenza-related bronchopneumonia. Medical historians identify that outbreak as part of the 1889 to 1890 Russian flu, generally regarded as the first pandemic of the modern era to circle the globe within months, moving by rail through Europe from October 1889 and reaching Madrid by mid-December. Gayarre died at 4:25 in the morning on 2 January 1890, in his apartment on Madrid’s Plaza de Oriente, a week before what would have been his 46th birthday.
His body was carried by train back to Roncal, drawing large crowds along the route, including in Pamplona, before burial in the village cemetery on 5 January. In 1901, sculptor Mariano Benlliure completed the elaborate marble and bronze mausoleum that still marks the grave, a design later honored with the Medal of Honor for Sculpture at the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition. Because Gayarre died before commercial sound recording existed, no recordings of his voice survive; everything known about how he actually sounded comes from written accounts by the critics and composers who heard him live.
The Theater That Kept His Name Alive
Here is the detail that separates Gayarre from any other 19th century regional celebrity Navarra produced: Pamplona did not just mourn him. It put his name on a building, and the building is still standing.
Pamplona’s Teatro Principal opened in 1841 on what is today the Plaza del Castillo, replacing an older comedy house that had stood on the same street since 1608. In 1903, the Ayuntamiento renamed it Teatro Gayarre, in memory of the tenor who had died thirteen years earlier. When the city’s Ensanche expansion required tearing down the old walls and buildings around the plaza, the theater was demolished in 1931 and rebuilt at its current location on Avenida Carlos III, with architect Javier Yárnoz Larrosa reconstructing the original façade stone by stone. It reopened on 3 May 1932.
Ernest Hemingway noticed the change and was not happy about it. In Death in the Afternoon (1932), he complained that Pamplona “has changed a lot,” adding that the city had “knocked down old Gayarre Theatre and damaged the square to open a wide street leading [to] the bull ring.” The theater he was mourning is the same one still operating today, just a few hundred meters from where he remembered it.
Teatro Gayarre survived a 1968 stage fire during a zarzuela performance and has been renovated repeatedly since, most recently with a 2023 to 2024 modernization of its stage rigging and lighting, partly funded through EU Next Generation programs. It now seats 884 people across a horseshoe-shaped Italian-style auditorium. On 16 June 2025, it hosted the 28th Premios Max de las Artes Escénicas, Spain’s most prestigious national theater and dance awards, broadcast on La 2 and RTVE, the first time in the ceremony’s history it was held anywhere in Navarra. Pamplona’s mayor and Gobierno de Navarra’s own culture director both took part in announcing it. The Fundación SGAE’s own release called Teatro Gayarre “sin duda, el coliseo más emblemático de Pamplona,” without question the city’s most emblematic theater. A shepherd’s son from Roncal has had his name on that building for more than 120 years, and as of 2025, the building is still the one Spain’s national theater world chooses when it wants to make a statement.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Julián Gayarre?
Julián Gayarre (1844 to 1890) was a Spanish opera tenor born to a shepherd family in Roncal, Navarra. He became one of the most celebrated tenors of his generation, singing lead roles at La Scala, the Paris Opéra, Covent Garden, and Madrid’s Teatro Real before his voice failed on stage in December 1889. He died 25 days later.
Why is Pamplona’s Teatro Gayarre named after him?
Pamplona renamed its main theater, originally called the Teatro Principal, as Teatro Gayarre in 1903, thirteen years after the tenor’s death, in his honor. The theater was rebuilt at its current Avenida Carlos III location in 1932 after the original building was demolished during the city’s Ensanche expansion, and it still carries his name today.
How did Julián Gayarre die?
Gayarre died on 2 January 1890 in Madrid, officially of influenza-related bronchopneumonia, 25 days after his voice cracked during a performance at the Teatro Real. Contemporary letters show he fell ill during the same influenza epidemic then sweeping Madrid, an outbreak medical historians identify as part of the 1889 to 1890 Russian flu pandemic.
Are there any recordings of Julián Gayarre singing?
No. Gayarre died in 1890, before commercial sound recording technology existed. Everything known about his voice comes from written accounts by the critics, composers, and audiences who heard him perform live.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.