Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

In the city of Nuremberg during Germany’s high Middle Ages, the burghers cherish music so deeply that they have formed a Guild of Master Singers, and the goldsmith Pogner has offered the hand of his daughter Eva to the winner of the Guild’s midsummer song contest. Now, on Midsummer’s Eve, a handsome young singer called Walther arrives in town, and for Eva it’s love at first sight. Walther is gifted but untrained: There’s surely no chance that he can join the Guild in time to win the contest and the girl. But the cobbler Hans Sachs—the wisest and most beloved of the Master Singers—knows talent when he hears it, and there might just be a way. On one level, Wagner’s only mature comic opera (1868) is a sunny tale of young love triumphing against the odds. In telling it, though, Wagner puts a whole community on stage—its revels and quarrels, as well as its civic pageantry—and a simple romantic comedy blossoms into a luminous, multi-layered parable of youth and age, tradition and renewal, and the unifying, life-affirming power of art. The majestic Prelude is a concert hall favourite, but the heart of the opera lies in its exuberant crowd scenes, its quiet poetry, and the compassionate, lovingly drawn character of Hans Sachs, one of opera’s warmest and most profoundly human heroes.