Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

Wolfgang Wagner's universally praised Bayreuth Festival production of "Die Meistersinger" most clearly demonstrates the originality of its conception in its treatment of Beckmesser. Refusing to caricature Beckmesser, to represent him simply as a fool or a pedant, Wolfgang Wagner allows the character the status of a genuine poet with a melancholy, almost elegiac quality. The production dispenses with the usual clichés and the excessive pathos which often lend the opera an overly "German" quality, and concentrates on the specifically human aspect of the characters, which other productions have tended to neglect. Hans Sachs is seen not as a solemn patriarch, but as a likable middle-aged man; Stolzing emerges as a sensitive, thoughtful individual drawn towards the bourgeoisie, rather than as an aggressive aristocrat. Wolfgang Wagner has succeeded in liberating "Die Meistersinger" from its aura of Teutonic heaviness and retrieving the light and color of the original: late medieval Nuremberg truly comes to life.