Wagner was never one for brevity, and he certainly didn’t think it was the soul of wit; Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg was his only comedy and it goes for roughly four and a half hours – more than six if you factor in intervals. To some people that may sound like hell, but it’s a surprisingly accessible and entertaining piece, so stuffed with glorious singing and arresting set pieces that it seems to go past in a flash of colour and pageantry. This co-production with London’s Royal Opera House is also visually explosive – a spectacle so massive it literally can’t fit on a Sydney stage – so for the uninitiated it makes for the perfect introduction to Wagner, and for fans an unmissable treat.
The story is actually pretty simple, even as it allows Wagner room for his signature philosophical debates on the nature of art and reason. The Guild of Mastersingers, made up of local artisans, is a club much like the Freemasons, only it admits new members through a singing audition. Technically open to all-comers, its complex and narrow set of rules and regulations means that newly arrived Walther von Stolzing (Stefan Vinke) – whose singing technique derives from birdsong and forest sounds – doesn’t stand a chance.
The reason Walther is so keen to join is because he’s fallen in love with Eva (Natalie Aroyan), whose father Veit Pogner (Daniel Sumegi) has offered her up as the prize in a singing competition that is only open to guild members. Local poet and cobbler, Hans Sachs (Michael Kupfer-Radecky) agrees to help the young man, even though he secretly wants Eva for himself, if only to keep her from the vile Sixtus Beckmesser (Warwick Fyfe), the cockroach-like villain of the piece.
Hans Sachs was a real person, an artist Wagner dearly treasured, and it’s fascinating to watch the character’s trajectory from critical voice of reason, through pained unrequited lover and finally to apologist for the status quo. Kupfer-Radecky, who was the second replacement in the role after two withdrawals, brings a beautiful wearied resignation to the part, and his tone is lovely throughout. It’s a pity that his voice lacks power, and is occasionally swallowed by the beefed-up Orchestra Victoria.
This is in stark contrast to Vinke as Walther, who attacks the role as if in a joust – grim-visaged and aggressively posed – but who sings with a purity and lyricism that seems otherworldly. He has what feels like an inexhaustible array of top notes that pour effortlessly from him, and his phrasing is sublime. Aroyan’s Eva is given far less to do, but she makes the most of every moment. Sumegi is in fine form as Pogner, and Fyfe wrings every drop of malice and stupidity from Beckmesser. There’s a strong echo of his jaw-dropping Alberich from the Ring Cycle in there, albeit in a minor key, and his final public humiliation is riotously funny. Most surprising of all is Nicholas Jones as Sachs’ apprentice, David; his glorious tenor soars over the pit and his increasingly cheeky iterations, from waiter and PR to chorus boy in the final show-within-a-show, are entirely winning.
Director Kasper Holten (with revival work by Dan Dooner) has thrown caution to the wind with this production, conceiving of a world where the contemporary and the medieval can rub up against each other in disturbing ways. The strictly Art Deco set in act one is full of waiters taking selfies, and act three has a contemporaneous chorus enjoying commedia dell’arte skits. This is more than a case of judicious anachronism; there’s a sense of a world thrown into temporal chaos, as the old forms vie with the new. This comes to an apotheosis at the end of act two, as a Bacchanal bursts onstage, bestial and tumescent; it’s as if Guillermo del Toro and John Carpenter gave birth to a litter of monstrosities, which then infested a small town.
That is merely one of the visual excesses that define this rather extraordinary, and impeccably detailed, production. There’s an almost imperceptible revolving set, there are aerial artists flying about the ceiling, there are towering angular walls and multiple moving parts. But it all works – far better than the current Gale Edwards production of La Bohème, which had an equally excessive set but no larger political scaffolding on which to hang it – because Wagner’s music is so expansive, so powerful and ecstatic, that it cuts through anything a director can throw at it. Conductor Pietari Inkinen, who conducted the Ring Cycle for Opera Australia, is superbly in control here; there’s a crispness in the finer moments and a fullness in the more bombastic that beautifully showcases Wagner’s range.
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg was almost buried by history, after the events of the 20th century rendered its fervent nationalism more than a little unpalatable. Even Nuremberg itself, now synonymous with the Nazi trials that took place after the war, seems a problematic setting. Directors can ignore the implications and resonances, or they can take charge of the material, something Holten does with assurance. He creates an ending that may throw Wagner’s intention under a bus but is nonetheless chilling and memorable. That, along with the glorious singing and astonishing spectacle, makes this one of the most thrilling shows of the year.
