The Mastersingers, including Pogner with Eva, arrive in procession under their banner of King David, and the people cheer them. Sachs stands to address the crowd, and the people greet him almost reverently, singing a chorale to words written by their favorite Mastersinger, urging each to awake, and greet the new morning, which dispels the clouds of doom. Hail Hans Sachs!
Comment: The entrance of the Mastersingers, with their familiar four-square music, shows them at their bourgeois best, proud and slightly smug. The people then sing “Wacht auf!,” the poem the historical Sachs wrote honoring Luther and the “bright dawn” of the Reformation. Wagner’s music is lyrical, swelling, and gorgeous. The assembled chorus chose this piece to sing at the ceremony marking the laying of the foundation stone for the Bayreuth Festival House in 1871. God did not cooperate that day, and sent a soaking and relentless rain, making everyone regroup in the old Opera House.
The tune named “Wacht auf!” was likewise written by Hans Sachs, and is still found in most hymnals (including some Catholic ones) under the name “Sleepers, Wake!” Ironically, it is usually sung at Advent (December, directly opposite Saint John’s Day), the darkest time of year in the Northern Hemisphere. It was famously harmonized by J. S. Bach.
Sachs is moved by the Nurembergers’ greeting. He speaks humbly of himself, saying he is only worthy of praise because of what Nuremberg and its glorious traditions have made him. Sachs then praises Pogner, whose song contest for Eva’s hand embodies the best of the Nuremberg spirit.
Comment: Sachs has a tendency to go on, and this monologue is no exception. The orchestra provides much of the interest here, weaving themes associated with Sachs’s resignation (both of Eva in particular and of the world and its follies in general). The emotion Sachs is meant to portray here is his private, melancholy reflection on life, though his words are standard grandstanding. This is the sort of character depth a singer must be able to portray in the role, and shows why younger basses almost never sing Hans Sachs. Life experience and a certain air of acceptance must be there, even if the voice is not in its first bloom.
Pogner, very touched, thanks Sachs. Beckmesser, who has been nervously looking at the poem crumpled in his pocket, gripes and fusses and accuses Sachs of writing an incomprehensible poem. Kothner calls the contest to order, and Beckmesser, ordering the apprentices to secure the wobbly stage, prepares to sing. The crowd comments on him. This one’s a good clerk, but rather old for Eva, isn’t he? He can’t even walk straight! Kothner orders “Begin!”
Beckmesser strums his lute and embarks. Using a tune much like his meandering serenade, he attempts to sing “Sachs’s” poem. The words come out entirely wrong, despite his cribbing with the sheet. The Mastersingers and the crowd look at each other nervously. What is Beckmesser talking about? Is he losing his mind? The clerk continues, but it only gets worse. The crowd begins to laugh at him, repeating his bizarre words and adding meanings of their own. Beckmesser pulls himself together and makes one final sally, but the crowd cracks up as he finishes, unable to suppress their laughter when he sings “Leberbaum” (liver-tree) instead of “Lebensbaum” (Tree of Life).
Comment: It’s rather refreshing to see Wagner, of all people, engage in a little silliness this one time. He must have had a lot of fun composing this part of the poem and its atrocious puns. For example, Walther’s “herrlich ein Baum” (“a glorious tree”) becomes “häng ich am Baum” (“I’m hanging on a tree”), and so on. Beckmesser’s arch little tune emphasizes each offense with many of the coloratura flourishes that the historical Mastersingers overused in their period of decadence. The effect can be hilarious in the hands of a capable singer-actor.
Beckmesser quits the stage and runs to Sachs, accusing him, who is so highly regarded there, as the author of this drivel before he throws the poem at Sachs and runs off into the crowd. Everyone is perplexed. Hans Sachs wrote such nonsense? The Mastersingers smell a scandal. Sachs quietly picks up the crumpled paper and declares that modesty forbids him to lay claim to such a beautiful song. Everyone assumes he is joking, but he tells them he means what he said, provided the song be properly sung. Whoever could do that would be declared a Mastersinger on the spot. Let anyone who can prove him right enter the circle as his witness!
Walther approaches Sachs, causing a stir. The Masters laugh at Sachs’s slyness, saying they’ll suffer such irregularities just this day. Now, says Sachs, see if Lord Walther von Stolzing can pull this song off! The apprentices announce “Begin!”
Walther mounts the stage and commences his song as he had sung it that morning. Kothner, who holds the poem to check for errors, is so enraptured by the beauty of the song that he lets the paper slip from his hands. Walther notices this out of the corner of his eye, and allows himself to improvise the song as the spirit moves him. The woman in the garden of whom he sings is no less than Eve, and the garden is Paradise! The crowd approves. The song is not easy at first, yet it is undeniably beautiful and worth following when sung like this! Walther continues: in the evening, his poetic soul recognizes the lady of the laurel tree as the Muse of Parnassus! The people note the song’s grace, faraway yet familiar. The Masters concede that it is well rhymed, if unusual. Walther sings of the woman of his dreams, who awoke both love and poetry in his heart. In winning her, he wins both Parnassus and Paradise! Before he can even finish, the people express their rapture at his song. How like a dream it is, beautiful, yet elusive. They call for the winner’s garland, and the Masters rise, unanimously awarding the garland to Walther.
Comment: Here we have all of Walther’s dreams in their final form as the Prize Song. The gimmick of Kothner dropping the page, allowing Walther to vary the melody from what we have already heard more than once, is often cited as a great moment of stagecraft, letting story circumvent the problem of the Mastersingers’ “marking” the performance. The stage instructions, which say that Walther sees this happen and responds accordingly, are often missed by directors, performers, and audiences alike.
Lest you think, from reading these pages, that the Prize Song will be old news by this point, minor variations notwithstanding, think again. First of all, the comments of the crowd and the Masters form a beautiful ensemble frame around the song itself, gilding, if you’ll pardon the pun, the song as we know it. The melody is deceptively elusive, introduced by two lovely and refreshing C major chords and beginning in an approachable form, but wandering all over the place according to its own internal logic before resolving. If people in the audience complain of its repetitiveness on the way out of the theater, challenge them to whistle it. Not one in a hundred will be able to.
As a piece of vocal music, the Prize Song lies high in the voice, with some dangerously exposed notes and a great deal of ornamentation. This is dramatically appropriate, since Walther would not be presenting his intimate thoughts of the morning quite the same way in front of all Nuremberg. Lighter, lyric tenors often like to take a whack at it in recitals, since Wagner didn’t write much music for their type of voice and this is one of their few available choices. Sometimes it works, sometimes not, but the real danger lies in thinking that the entire role of Walther is a light, lyric, “Italianate” tenor role. So it is, compared to Tristan or Siegfried, but overly ambitious tenors take this a step further, and add Walther to their repertoires thinking it will be smooth sailing. This can be fatal: tenorial careers have crashed and burned in this role (no names, please). What they forget is that there’s a good five hours (!) of singing before the Prize Song, most of it against a thick Wagnerian orchestra and chorus, the latter being something not even Tristan and Siegfried have to worry about. Walthers run out of voice even more often than Siegfrieds, and then, let me warn you, the audience is in for the most torturously long night imaginable.
Walther kneels before the ecstatic Eva, who places the winner’s garland around his neck. The people praise Sachs, whose sly plan has made everything right. Pogner approaches Walther with a gold chain and medallion of King David, thus accep
ting him into the guild of Mastersingers, but Walther rejects the honor bluntly. Everyone is shocked by this snub, and they turn instinctively to Sachs.
Sachs takes Walther by the hand, and gently but firmly tells him not to be so contemptuous of the Mastersingers. Walther owes his present happiness not to his rank or arms, but to the fact that he is a poet and has been accepted as such by the Masters, who have preserved what is best and most German in the old arts, bringing them from the confines of the aristocracy out to the people. Sachs warns the crowd to beware the evil tricks that await their nation. If the German people and realm should decay under false, foreign rule, no prince would understand his people any more, and who would know what is German and true unless it lived in the spirit of the Masters? Therefore, let them be honored! Then even if the Holy Roman Empire should one day vaporize, there would still be holy German art!
Walther accepts the chain of the Mastersingers, and all the people join the praise of holy German art, hailing Nuremberg and its dear Hans Sachs.
Comment: Sachs’s final monologue is a problem. The second half, with its warnings of foreign rule, is particularly objectionable. First he acts the skillful peacemaker, then tells the crowd never to forget their artistic heritage as represented by such guilds as the Mastersingers. The line reads “Honor your German Masters,” and the sense is clearly “Honor the guildmasters of your country and the traditions they have preserved,” which is actually quite a democratic sentiment for Wagner. No matter. Critics of this opera like to focus on this line, playing games with the translation. For example, The New York Times quoted the line, out of context, as “Obey your German Masters!” (the verb is ehren, “to honor”), as if Richard Wagner needed any help emphasizing his chauvinism!
In any case, nobody is imagining the xenophobia and paranoia in Sachs’s warning about foreign rule and the degeneracy of the German Volk—it’s right there plain as day. Even Newman takes exception to this monologue, but he and the others have found a way to praise the opera while decrying this speech. It’s really very simple: blame it on Cosima.
Certainly, Cosima is a plausible culprit. She had the special brand of noxious, nationalistic prejudice reserved for the foreign-born (like Napoleon before her and Hitler after her). In a letter to King Ludwig, she boasted how her influence kept this speech in the libretto when Wagner wanted to edit it and end the opera with the Prize Song. Proof, say the scholars, that it’s her fault, and that she was even worse on these issues than Wagner himself. Perhaps, but anybody who believes that Wagner needed his arm twisted by Cosima to keep from editing himself is delusional
BASICS: WHEN TO EAT, DRINK, AND VISIT THE RESTROOM
Pay close attention here, or you could risk serious trouble.
Meistersinger performances usually begin at 6 p.m. So do several other Wagner operas, including Parsifal and Götterdämmerung, but the rules are slightly different here since it’s the third act of Meistersinger that’s the killer. One advantage of the longer third act of this opera is that your body will be more accustomed to the sheer act of sitting by the time you are required to put it to the big test. The biggest problem here is planning your victual sustenance. Naturally, you will want to try to eat something before you arrive at the opera house, and perhaps have a booster snack from the overpriced cafe in the lobby at intermission. However, you will be ravenous by the time the performance ends! Most people never even notice the disturbing politics of Sachs’s final monologue because they are too busy thinking about which pizza parlors might still be open on the way home.
Plan this out ahead. Inquire from friends or the ushers which restaurants are open late in the vicinity, and set your sights there.
Definitely show your opera savviness by visiting the restroom at the second intermission. Greenhorns may skip the opportunity, having just emerged from the riotous and relatively brief Act II wondering why everybody thinks Meistersinger is so long and expecting to hold out till they get home. Chances are they will be seen running up the aisle, accompanied by gestures of panic and despair, a mere hour and three-quarters into Act III.
You can also prove your wisdom by ordering that cocktail at the first intermission and allowing it to seep into your body during the fun second act. Anyone taking alcohol or other sedatives at the second intermission will be slabbed out five minutes into the third act.
ROUGH SPOTS AND HOW TO GET THROUGH THEM
Basically, either you are going to enter the mind-set of Meistersinger, with all its length and detail, or you’re not. If you’re not, there’s no guidebook in the world that can make this anything but the longest opera in history (which it is), peppered at widely spaced intervals with a riot scene, a quintet, some festival music, and a Prize Song.
Even if you are a potential fan of this opera, there will be some episodes where your attention wanders. If the veteran operagoers of your acquaintance scoff at this, remind them that in previous generations this opera, like Tristan, was invariably cut in performance everywhere but Bayreuth. Nowadays, cuts are fewer, if they exist at all.
You may also take encouragement from the fact that the score of Meistersinger, with all its subtleties, is the most accessible music Wagner ever wrote. You never need to feel like you’re “missing” anything, or that there are deep musical truths being revealed that everybody is getting except you. It’s all right there begging to be heard, if you’re awake to hear it.
The opening of Act I is stunning, but matters soon unravel with David’s fifteen-minute instruction in the art of mastersinging. The best idea for this section is to fall dead asleep or practice deep meditation. Pogner’s entrance is also less than sensational. When he is talking to Beckmesser, the orchestra plays snippets of themes we have heard in connection with Walther’s courtship of Eva. These snippets are subtle and fragmented, contrasting Beckmesser’s attempts at courtship with Walther’s. See if you can hear them and identify them, and then see if and how well the performers onstage are responding to them. Act I soars once Walther starts singing, and the rich, all-male ensemble that concludes the act is a time to sit back and let the Niagara of sound wash over you.
Act II is one of Wagner’s greatest achievements in unflagging lyric theater. Eva and Sachs may seem long-winded to read about, but their repartee is swift. What we are hoping to see here is the attraction, latent and slightly dangerous, between the two. Can the performers convince you of this, or do they look like a young tart and an old lecher? Most often, they seem entirely uninterested in each other. If the bass and soprano at the performance you are attending can create an air of quiet fire in this scene, the dramatic depth will be greatly enhanced.
Act III, of course, is the Longest Thing in the History of Civilization. However, it is loaded with sublime music, even though Sachs shuts it down at every turn. He has five actual monologues in this act, two of which are about shoemaking and one about German racial destiny. He has a great deal else to say as well in between monologues. No one else in this act can be accused of understatement, either. Basically, you’re in good hands in Act III if (1) the bass portraying Sachs can convince you of the warm and nuanced humanity beyond his politics, (2) the Beckmesser is a good actor who can “work” an audience, and (3) the tenor’s voice holds out. Any of this can go wrong at any moment, but the first scene of the act, lasting almost an hour and a half, changes characters frequently. If the Beckmesser is a bore, Eva may save the day, and so on. The festival scene is not too long—less than an hour—and if Sachs is boring in his monologues, there are usually lots of pretty costumes on the choristers to help hold your attention.
PRODUCTIONS: WHAT YOU MIGHT EXPECT TO SEE
If there is a successful way to present this opera separated from its specific historical context, no one has yet found it. Unlike Lohengrin, which is a fairy tale, and Tristan, which takes place in the psyche, Meistersinger is just too rooted in the sixteenth-century German milieu, and almost all American productions accept this fact. You will probably have to settle for something t
hat looks like the Oktoberfest area of your local theme park re-created on stage, or, as Frederic Spotts put it, “ye gables of olde Nuremberg.”
Even Wieland Wagner, whose brilliant and revolutionary productions in the 1950s and 1960s seemed capable of redefining every work in his grandfather’s opus, had trouble with this one. In the first postwar season in 1951, while Wieland’s Parsifal and Ring were turning the opera world on its head, Bayreuth presented a perfectly traditional Meistersinger. After all, as Wieland himself had written in the 1951 program, the nature of Meistersinger calls for naturalistic production. When Wieland finally tackled this opera himself in 1956, his de-Nazified production was something of a flop. Act II was basically blank: two benches and two abstract trees. Act III was a sort of lecture hall amphitheater, with the onlookers forming almost a Greek chorus.
This production had the honor of earning the first boos in the history of the Bayreuth Festival House, and Wieland was widely accused of using shock tactics merely for effect—a charge he loathed and denied to the end of his life in 1966. His second Meistersinger, in 1963, was considerably more traditional. The third act festival was recognizable as old Nuremberg, but Wieland added many classical Greek motifs, a reference that had served him well to internationalize Wagner’s other operas. The muses were present on stage (albeit in bust-enhancing dirndls), and the people and guilds gathered, as if spontaneously, rather than marching in fine Teutonic order.
This touch proved to be influential. Productions today tend to stress the popular rather than the hierarchical aspects of the festival scene.
European productions twist themselves in all directions to relieve this opera of its Nazi-associated imagery. Karajan’s Salzburg production of 1974 stressed the mythological rather than the historical past. The sets were poetic, pre-Raphaelite visions, in an attempt to gild the guilds, as it were. By all accounts, it was superbly beautiful, but whether it was politically convincing is still debated. Another important production in Buenos Aires in 1980 extended this idea by making the setting of the opera so richly gorgeous that nobody could think it was anywhere on planet earth, least of all late-medieval Germany.
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