Wieland Wagner's Meistersinger at Bayreuth, 1963.
Of the Wagner operas, Die Meistersinger is the one most rooted in some semblance of historical reality. Its setting is a recognizable version of Nuremberg in the sixteenth century, at a time when guilds of Mastersingers were at their height across Germany. The opera's lead character, the shoemaker-poet Hans Sachs, is a well-documented figure who lived from 1494 to 1676. Nothing supernatural happens over the course of the opera, although there is talk of a mischievous imp setting off the riot at the end of Act II. No potions are drunk, no wanderers cross the centuries. There are certainly no gods. Yet in its own way Meistersinger is as much as a mythic fable as any of the Wagner operas. The chief myth here is Germany, whose spirit Sachs embodies and whose mission he sets forth at the end. That mixture of fact and myth proved, in the end, more politically combustible than any other Wagner creation. Not by accident did Meistersinger become a propaganda pageant in Nazi Germany, a fixture of the yearly Party Rally in Nuremberg.
Wagner first sketched out the scenario of Meistersinger in the summer of 1845 — a productive period that also yielded a prose draft for Lohengrin and early ideas for Parsifal. At the time, he was Kapellmeister in Dresden, and was chafing against the conservatism of the Saxon court and of the wider musical community. Meistersinger essentially becomes an allegory for Wagner's own struggles, as a gifted, headstrong young singer-poet contends with the rule-bound small-mindedness of the local Mastersinger guild. From the outset, Hans Sachs was slated to play a mediating role, supporting the young poet while directing him with the wisdom of experience. Sachs is also the conduit for meditations on the nature of German art and its role in binding together the divided German peoples. The phrase "holy German art" was always intended to cap his closing monologue, although its meaning shifted as the scenario and libretto evolved. As I discuss in Chapter 5 of Wagnerism, the final monologue took on a more belligerent, nationalist tone at a late stage, with lasting consequences for the opera's subsequent career as a political symbol.
In the score, Meistersinger is designated an Oper, or opera — the only one of Wagner's works after Lohengrin so described. (The Ring is a Bühnenfestspiel, or stage festival play; Tristan is a Handlung, an action; Parsifal is Bühnenweihfestspiel, a stage-consecration festival play.) It begins with a Vorspiel, or prelude, that behaves like the traditional operatic overture that Wagner seemed to have abandoned with the Lohengrin prelude. One hears an array of themes in contrasting moods, anticipating characters and situations in the work to come. At the same time, the prelude is a formidable symphonic construction that might have been intended to silence those who dismissed Wagner as an amateur, dilettante, or inept avant-gardist. Here's a thoughtful and detailed discussion by Richard Atkinson:
The opera proper opens in St. Katherine's Church in Nuremberg, with the congregation is singing a chorale at the end of Mass. Walther von Stolzing, a visiting knight, approaches Eva Pogner, daughter of the local goldsmith, and asks if she is engaged. It turns out that the local mastersinger guild is holding a song contest the next day, with Eva's hand in marriage offered as the prize. (She has the right to refuse, but her father insists on her marrying a mastersinger.) Love having been kindled between him and Eva, Walther sets about learning the complicated rules of the guild, enlisting help from David, an apprentice. The mastersingers gather for the contest, and Walther encounters his chief rival, Beckmesser, and his future mentor, Hans Sachs. The Trial Song that Walther offers is mercilessly dissected by Beckmesser, who serves as Merker, or judge. The complaints he offers — there is no clear beginning, no clear end, shapeless phrases, not a trace of melody — are obvious echoes of the criticism that Wagner encountered throughout his career. Sachs, intrigued by Walther's free, original style, tries to intervene, but the masters will hear none of it, and reject the newcomer out of hand.
Act II begins with scenes involving the subsidiary characters: David, his beloved Magdalena, Pogner, and Eva. Sachs, at work in his cobbler's shop, sings the first of his great solo turns, the Flieder-Monolog (lilac-tree monologue), in which he ponders the unconventional beauty of Walther's song.
Eva comes to consult with Sachs, indicating that she dreads the prospect of Beckmesser winning the contest. She'd rather Sachs himself win — a proposition that Sachs dismisses, though as a lonely widower he is wistful at the thought. As night falls, Beckmesser arrives to serenade Eva, who avoids the situation by having Magdalena pose at her window. She and Walther resolve to elope. Sachs, hammering at his shoes, deliberately undermines Beckmesser's singing, just as Beckmesser had undermined Walther's. Events tilt toward chaos when David sees Beckmesser serenading Magdalena and attacks him. A general uproar ensues, in the middle of which Sachs manages to separate Eva and Walther, foiling their plan to escape. He is not opposed to their attachment, but he wants them to be part of the community. In a haunting epilogue, the Night-Watchman makes his way through the town: "Beware of ghosts and spooks, that no evil spirit ensnare your soul!"
Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony (Pristine).
The great, brooding prelude to Act III, above, anticipates the mood of Sachs's Wahn-Monolog in the first scene, in which he bemoans the "madness" that overtook the town the previous night. It was some malicious sprite at work, he decides, on the eve of Johannistag, or Midsummer Day. Not for the first time one feels a kinship with Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, even if Wagner noticeably lacks the light touch.
Walther stops by, and Sachs guides him toward the composition of a new song, the Prize Song, which will pay more heed to the Mastersingers' guidelines while preserving the singer's own voice. You make your own rule, Sachs says, and then you follow it. Then Beckmesser enters, and espies a poem in Sachs's handwriting, not realizing that it is a transcription of Walther's new song. What is Sachs up to — is he entering the contest, too? Sachs says he isn't, and offers the text to Beckmesser as a gift. He calculates, correctly, that Beckmesser will make a hash of it. In the following scene, Eva, Walther, David, and Magdalena gather at Sachs's and sort out various misunderstandings. The ensemble sing a transcendent Quintet that tends to win over even the Wagner skeptics, like James Joyce.
The enormously long final scene takes place in the Festival Meadow. After a parade of town guilds, a Dance of the Apprentices, and a Procession of the Masters, Sachs is hailed as the presiding spirit of the city. The entire company sings the chorus "Wach’ auf, es nahet gen den Tag" ("Wake up, the day is night"), based on a text by the historical Sachs.
When the contest begins, Beckmesser makes an idiot of himself, spluttering nonsense as he struggles to adapt the Walther-Sachs text to his music. He tries to blame Sachs for the failure, whereupon Sachs reveals that the poem is actually Walther's. General curiosity gives Walther a chance to enter the contest unscheduled, and he conquers all doubters with his Prize Song, "Morgenlich leuchtend im rosigen Schein" ("Glowing in dawn's rosy fingers"). Here is the celebrated tenor Leo Slezak in 1910:
From the UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive.
For a moment, the headstrong Walther threatens to reject the guild's offer of membership, but Sachs convinces him otherwise in his closing monologue, the eternal problematic "Verachtet mir die Meister nicht" ("Scorn not the masters"). After Sachs sings in praise of "holy German art," general joy prevails. I discuss the darker ramifications of this monologue in Chapter 5 of Wagnerism, but to set forth the problem in simplest terms, here it is conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler at the Nuremberg Nazi Party Rally of 1938.
