Midsummer's eve in Nuremberg and the real-life cobbler-poet Hans Sachs and the guild of mastersingers are pursuing their craft of poetry and music according to traditions and rules. A goldsmith's daughter, Eva, and a knight, Walther von Stolzing, fall in love, but Eva's father has promised her to the winner in the forthcoming song contest. Under the wise tuition of Sachs, can Walther learn the mastersinger's art in time to win Eva’s hand and see off a challenge from the foolish town clerk Beckmesser?

Richard Wagner’s only comic opera had a long gestation. Summer 1845: drawing on the History of German Literature as well as the biography of poet and shoemaker Hans Sachs, the composer sketches out ideas for a satirical counterpart to Tannhäuser. Autumn 1861: Wagner writes to his publisher that he intends to cheer himself up with ‘something lighter’ and begins composing Die Meistersinger, which he would not complete until six years later. With a sense of self-derision with which he is not usually associated, Wagner brings together an exercise in style and an aesthetic manifesto in praise of the ‘noble and holy German art!’. Here is an opera that speaks volumes about the composer’s own preoccupations: the widening divide between high art and popular culture, and the fracturing of tradition by the radically new. Wise and audacious, the characters of Sachs and Walther can be seen as a double self-portrait of their creator. OperaVision shares live Teatro Real’s new production (the first in Madrid for 22 years) which is conducted by Pablo Heras-Casado and staged by a director with some gift for comedy, Laurent Pelly.

Full performance streamed LIVE on OperaVision on 18 May 2024 at 18:00 CET and available until 18 November 2024 at 12:00 CET: operavision.eu/performance/die-meistersinger-von-n…

CAST

Hans Sachs
Gerald Finley

Veit Pogner
Jongmin Park

Kunz Vogelgesang
Paul Schweinester

Konrad Nachtigal
Barnaby Rea

Sixtus Beckmesser
Leigh Melrose

Fritz Kothner
José Antonio López

Balthasar Zorn
Albert Casals

Ulrich Eisslinger
Kyle van Schoonhoven

Augustin Moser
Jorge Rodríguez- Norton

Hermann Ortel
Bjørn Waag

Hans Schwarz
Valeriano Lanchas

Hans Foltz
Frederic Jost

Walther von Stolzing
Tomislav Mužek

David
Sebastian Kohlhepp

Eva
Nicole Chevalier

Magdalene
Anna Lapkovskaja

Sereno
Alexander Tsymbalyuk

Chorus
Teatro Real Chorus

Orchestra
Teatro Real Orchestra

Music and text
Richard Wagner

Conductor
Pablo Heras-Casado

Director
Laurent Pelly

Costume
Laurent Pelly
Jean-Jacques Delmotte

Sets
Urs Schönebaum

Lighting
Urs Schönebaum

Chorus Master
José Luis Basso

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