Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

I spent six hours at the Met on Tuesday night and thankfully I've almost forgotten it. I saw a great production of a rather dull opera. I have read that this is Wagner's only "comic opera" and that he wrote the libretto for this one on his own. And, yet, that it actually contained more Wagner actually made it less like the Wagner I know and love.

First, I want to say that I am an opera trooper. If it requires back pain I want to be there. I did the entire Ring Cycle in a week. I sat through both Parsifal and Lohengrin last season. So, I just want to make it clear that it was not the six hours I put into this that caused my discontent.

This is what I love about a Wagner opera: textured and layered music, psychological intrigue, malicious schemes, the theme of ambition, the idea of purity, and great orchestral music underneath challenging vocal parts. Meistersinger had next to none of that.

The musical highlight for me was the prelude before the third act. It was a hauntingly beautiful opening to hour four. James Morris was amazing as Hans Sachs. No quibbles can be made about this. He just seemed to get inside the skin of the character. Johan Botha played the young knight. I caught Botha in Don Carlo in December. He's certainly a capable singer, a very capable singer. But, the leap into magic, where the audience flies away with the singer, does not happen when he sings. To be dreadfully honest, because he is often regularly playing young, dashing characters losing 100-150 pounds would be great visually, probably wouldn't hurt his singing and might help everyone all around. Usually, I would never comment on weight, but it is distracting given the roles he is ready to sing. The third suitor Beckmesser provided welcome comic relief and had a great voice for the part. And, I want to give proper credit to the singer who sang the role of David.

So, everyone was great, good singing all around. I just did not love the story or the music. It had decent moments. But, in almost six hours we got only about twenty minutes of female voices. That is a lot of singing in the lower range.

I will not go into the story. You can read all about it on wikipedia, if you would like. The opera was built around a tremendous structure, the structure of a song. The libretto reads closer to Music Appreciation 101, rather than story line. I feel confident that if I did a dissertation on this opera it would yield great appreciation for the structural nuance and its marriage to libretto and the entire opera. But, a casual one-time listen does not yield this appreciation for me. And, absent going back to school this will probably be a one-time listen for me.

This was the only Wagner offering this season at the Met, after two great evenings last year. It was rather disappointing as the only offering. I'm already waiting anxiously for next year. You can not go see it, because it is not being offered again this season. But, I want to tell you if you happened to catch it, give Wagner another chance. This was not as good as it gets. This isn't even as good as it gets this season. We can hold off on another production of this opera for another five to ten years, and I would be thankful.