Meistersinger, Bayreuth Festival, July 2011

Tickets for Bayreuth are hard to come by, so you know something’s wrong when people are disposing of Meistersinger at half price outside the theatre.

Walther centre, Sachs left, Beckmesser right, all photos Bayreuther Festspiele/ Enrico Nawrath

It’s the production that’s the problem, but even if one likes the idea of Walther being a graffiti artist who exhibits a portfolio of bad Picasso-like paintings to the Masters in Act I and acts like a yobbo, there was still a problem with his singing, and with Sebastian Weigle’s conducting.

The overture was sluggishly played; it lacked spring and coherence, and the prelude to Act III was a bit ragged, lacking the powerful depth it should convey. Only the prelude to Act II gave any sense of what this music can really sound like, but on balance it was a lifeless rendering of Wagner’s wonderful score.

Walther and David in Act I

The singing and performances varied in standard. Georg Zeppenfeld was a superb Pogner, dignified, sympathetic and powerfully voiced. Adrian Eröd sang strongly as Beckmesser, though the production is against him by not allowing him to make an inadvertent fool of himself with the mistaken words of his attempted prize song. On the contrary, he dresses like a goofball in Act III — quite differently from his strait-laced appearance in Acts I and II — and looks terribly pleased with his silly piece of performance art, digging out a naked man from under a pile of sand. Norbert Ernst also sang very strongly as David, but Burkhard Fritz was a disappointing Walther, giving a sad rendering of the prize song and ending with the wrong pitch for Paradies. He also seemed unable to portray the outlandish creativity that Katharina Wagner’s production seems to be laying on this role, and merely degenerated into uncouth boorishness. As Eva and Magdalena, I felt Michaela Kaune and Carola Guber did not rise above the production in their vocal work, though I saw Ms. Kaune in the same role at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, in a Götz Friedrich production, and she came over far better. Fortunately James Rutherford as Hans Sachs helped hold things together, aided by the fact that his representation in this production is relatively standard. After a comparatively quiet start he really came into his own in Act III, singing a fine Wahn monologue and giving a strong performance at the end, even if the lighting, featuring only him and Beckmesser, made him look like a giant sepulchral figure.

Walther and Eva in Act II

When Walther stalked off the stage after winning the prize, Eva followed and we saw neither of them again, so Sachs is left to address the first part of his final monologue Verachtet mir die Meister nicht (Don’t condemn the masters to me) to no one at all. Mind you, in this production Walther doesn’t want to listen to anything, and early in Act III when Walther asks Sachs the difference between a beautiful song and a master song, he takes no notice of the wonderful reply Mein Freund, in holder Jugendzeit . . . (My friend in the sweet time of youth . . .).

Act III

Then in the following scene where Beckmesser finds Walther’s wooing song, transcribed by Sachs, and accuses Sachs of trying to woo Eva, he asks Ist das Eure Hand? (Is that your hand?), to which Sachs replies yes. Yet in this production Sachs writes nothing, and what Beckmesser has picked up is a tatty piece of toy stage scenery, sloppily painted by Walther. So it wasn’t Sachs’s hand at all — he’s lying, but what’s the point?

If you try to do clever things like replacing the composition of songs and poetry with performance art, then you’re liable to run into difficulties like this, and Katharina Wagner’s production is rife with them. I saw it two years ago with the same singers for David, Beckmesser, Eva and Magdalena, so I thought I’d close my eyes, but on finding the conducting inadequate I opened them and tried to concentrate on the staging. Next year Meistersinger is not on the programme, and one hopes that when it reappears there will be a new production. I can understand doing strange things with other Wagner operas, and the extraordinary production of Parsifal was intriguing — I want to see it again — but Meistersinger does not lend itself to new concepts in the same way, and it’s time to drop the effort. With a better production the singers and the conductor will surely give stronger performances.

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Wagner Wochen, February 2010

Rossini’s comment that, “Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour” was spoken before Die Meistersinger was created, and this opera has, for me, not a dull moment — it’s one glorious thing after another. Of course a determined director can spoil it, as happened at Bayreuth this past summer in Katharina Wagner’s diabolical production, but here in Berlin the production by Götz Friedrich was a wonderful antidote. The church pews became visible during the overture, the houses of Sachs and Pogner were opposite one another, the Flieder bush was visible on stage in Act II, and Sachs breathed its scent during his Flieder monologue. All this is as it should be, and I loved the sets by Peter Sykora, who collaborated with Kirsten Dephoff on the nineteenth and twentieth century costume designs. The production had a sense of movement and spontaneity, and on the fields outside Nuremberg the opening events of the final scene were enlivened by acrobats, and a wonderful charade with the tailors, their goatskin, and men dressed in armour, showing how they protected the city from a long siege by pretending it still had frisky goats inside.

Within this delightful production we had Klaus Florian Vogt as a glorious Walther, with Michaela Kaune as a lovely Eva, both having sung these same roles in Bayreuth last July. Beckmesser was brilliantly performed by Markus Brück, clearly sung, amusingly pompous and clumsy, but never over the top. Kristinn Sigmundsson was a strong Pogner with fine stage presence, and Paul Kaufmann and Ulrike Helzel did well as David and as Eva’s confidante Magdalena. James Johnson sang a very sympathetic Hans Sachs, and though he was a little underpowered and lacking in stage presence, he interacted well with the other cast members. The chorus sang strongly, and the conducting by Donald Runnicles never flagged, never went over the top, and gave the singers plenty of space.

As I said, this was the perfect antidote to the nonsense from Bayreuth, and I’m delighted I came to Berlin to see it.

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Bayreuther Festspiele, July 2009

At the end of this opera, Hans Sachs sings a wonderful soliloquy on the importance of preserving German art against alien threats and invasions. How ironic then that this production is entirely alien to Wagner’s great opera, and only by keeping ones eyes closed and ignoring the indescribable nonsense on stage can one preserve the great art of Wagner’s music. Who could do such a thing to so wonderful an opera? And do it at Wagner’s own festival, in the opera house he founded? Surely the Wagner family, guardians of the great man’s legacy, would not allow one of his works to serve as a background on which a confused person can hang a lot of grossly impertinent and even grotesque staging. Who on earth was able to get away with this?

The answer is, I’m afraid, a member of the Wagner family, one who obviously lacks the self-discipline necessary for true creativity. This is someone whose narcissism seeks attention by shocking the audience, and by extension the world outside Bayreuth. But surely the administrators of the Festival will do away with such stuff? No chance, because the producer has put this on before, and has now become co-administrator. If anyone thought that might have tempered her wish to outrage the audience and shriek out her own inadequacy, they were mistaken, because this year’s production of Meistersinger was apparently even more ludicrous than last year’s.

It is useless to try listing the follies and contradictions that make this production so incoherent, and the only interest can be in the singers and conductor. It is clear that Bayreuth no longer attracts the calibre of singers it used to, so they were very lucky to have a superb Walther in the person of Klaus Florian Vogt, who sang like a god. Adrian Eröd was a very strong Beckmesser, as was Norbert Ernst as David, and Alan Titus a pleasingly solid Hans Sachs. Pogner was Artur Korn, with Michaela Kaune as his daughter Eva and Carola Guber as her nurse Magdalena, but they could not rise above the production. Conducting was by Sebastian Weigle, who did a good job with the invisible orchestra, but missed some highlights, though it is difficult to blame him when he has to watch the appalling nonsense on stage. At the end there was enthusiastic applause for some of the singers, particularly Klaus Florian Vogt, and hearty boos for the producer, Katharina Wagner.

This appalling nonsense was worse by far than yesterday’s dour production of Tristan, which is really saying something.

Der Rosenkavalier, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Feb 2009

This production by Götz Friedrich sets the opera in the early twentieth century, and it works very convincingly. Daniela Sindram was the best Octavian I’ve ever seen, singing and acting the part of a young man to perfection. Her body movement was entirely masculine, and when she pretended to be the little maid Mariandel, she managed to do the young man being a young woman brilliantly. Kurt Rydl’s portrayal of Baron Ochs was superbly natural, without over-acting or stepping over the line into farce, as sometimes happens with this part, and his singing was thoroughly engaging. Michaela Kaune as the Marschallin also sang well, and while she did not portray the knowing sexiness and air of quiet command that some of the great Marschallins have, she evinced a lovely vulnerability, and her voice in the solo passages at the end was sublime. These three cast members carried the opera, and were very well supported by Burkhard Ulrich and Ulrike Helzel as the scheming Valzacchi and Anina, and by Ofelia Sala as a rather frumpy young Sophie, who had a little more vibrato than I would like. The orchestra played in a restrained and lyrical way under the baton of Peter Schneider, and this was a fitting finale to a great week of Richard Strauss.