Marlies'Artbeat: Last Chance to See Met Opera's great traditional "Meistersinger."

Here they go again! Richard Wagner’s comic opera, Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg, deals with the famous 16th Century Master Guilds. When next staged by the Met, (planned for 2019,) it will be set in Wagner’s own 19th Century time. Will that work for us?

In the meanwhile, catch the encore of the delightful, traditional, Otto Schenk version, in Live-at-the-Met-in-HD, with James Levine in the pit. It’s too good to miss!

This is one opera that recounts historically correct material – but some people think it also harbors politically incorrect barbs.

So let’s get that argument over with right now. The accusers suggest that Wagner created the character of the devious and repulsive Beckmesser, the Town Clerk and prejudiced “Marker,” as a Jew.

There is no denying that Wagner (1813-1883) was a vicious and most vocal anti-Semite and that the Nazis made horrible use of his Aryan-oriented super-race ideas.

But there is plenty of factual evidence to prove that the caricature of Beckmesser was to damage the image of the music critic Eduard Hanslick, who was at the spearhead of the famous Brahms/Wagner – Classicism versus Romanticism -- controversy.

Louis Biancolli in his book, “The Opera Reader,” describes Beckmesser as “the scoundrelly pedant, opposed, like all hidebound custodians of the older ways, to any progress in the arts. As everyone knows, in this Beckmesser the composer pilloried forever Eduard Hanslick, the dreaded critical oracle of Vienna who had become the arch enemy of Wagnerism.”

Since Wagner obviously thought highly of the entire idea of the guilds, and Beckmesser is an accepted mastersinger employed by the city, Wagner hardly would have conceived the character as a Jew-in-disguise.

What’s more, even with all of Wagner’s anti-Semitism, he is too good a composer to have missed the opportunity of assigning the character hints of Kletzmer or liturgical musical material. If you can discern any such elements, you have a far better ear than most of us!

So let’s put all that to rest and get to the incredible achievement of Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg.

Wagner originally planned it as a 1-act (half-hour) sort of antidote to the singing contest in his Tannhaueser. In that opera, virtue victors over vice. In Meistersinger, the victory is genius, and good sense, over pedantry and opposition to innovation.

Starting it in 1845, he tabled it for other work, picked it up again in 1861and finally completed it in 1868 as a 3-act, almost 6-hour masterpiece. As his only comedy, (with decidedly serious underpinnings,) it premiered in Munich on June 21st of that year. The conductor was Hans von Buelow, whose wife Cosima, became Wagner’s second wife and mother of his children.

Die Meistersinger is a splendid example of Wagner’s ideal of the “Gesamptkunstwerk,” (total-work-of-art) in which music and text are equal, and the importance of all other elements of operatic production create “The Music-Drama.”

What hardly ever is mentioned, is that this opera’s libretto, (penned by Wagner himself, as it is for all his works,) is entirely in rhyming verse. Incredibly, the rhymes are hardly ever forced, cleverly apt, often colloquial, always charming. A fantastic feat!

Basically it tells the story of a singing contest in which the prize is the young daughter of a prosperous meistersinger. A devious, bumbling member of the guild, much too old for her, cheats in the attempt to win her. A knight succeeds, with the help of the favorite master-singer of them all, Hans Sachs, who has been fully documented as having lived in Nuernberg from 1494-1576.

Contrary to other “through music” of Wagner’s works, this opera offers us actual arias, duets, trios, a goose-bumps eliciting quintet, even an unforgettable hymn in the opera’s opening church scene.

All this was presented in the Live-at-the-Met-in HD transmission of the entertaining Otto Schenk production that dates from 1995, and features the endearing medieval sets by Guenther Schneider-Siemssen, and captivating choreography by Carmen De Lavallada.

For Maestro James Levine, ensconced in the pit, this was his 34th performance of the opera. In an enlightening interview during an intermission, he let us know how his admiring views of the work.

Hosted by the super-star Renee Fleming, other HD intermissions offered us captivating tidbits of “insider information” from the major singers as they came off stage, as well as the complicated set installations that creates this monumental effort.

The formidable cast was headed by the experienced bass baritone Michael Volle, as the genial cobbler, Sachs. Endowed with a beautiful sound; his interpretation is on target; his diction easily understood. A good actor, he is a formidable Sachs.

The knight, Walter, was sung by Johan Botha whom you might remember as the powerful Otello in the HD transmission of Verdi’s opera. Both parts show off his fine tenor capacity.

Annette Dasch was a beautifully rendered Eva, who did not overdo the girlishness of the teenager “prize,” as some other sopranos have been known to do.

Magdalene, the maid of the Pogner household, was supplied by the capable voice of Karen Cargill. The kindly master of the house, the bass Hans-Peter Koenig, was a far cry from the menacing Hunding and treacherous Hagen of the recent Met Ring cycle.

The American tenor, Paul Appleby, a graduate of the Met’s Young Artists Development Program, made an endearing David, vocally, physically and with diction that allowed one to understand every rhyme of his role as the amusing apprentice.

The tenor Johann Martin Kraenzle was the nasty, Beckmesser. He was more stately than earlier interpreters, and chose not to spit out each word as is the custom. One felt sorry for him in the end.

In total, this Meistersinger was hugely entertaining, with splendid work by the chorus and ballet, and lots of winning bits-of-business in the guild parade leading to the actual contest. It was truly grand opera, befitting our great Met.

The audience in the actual house, showed immense approval, and in the HD movie theater quite a bit of applause was heard at curtain-call time. I believe the audience was not only applauding the performance, but was showing its appreciation for the opera itself.

The judgment of the distinguished statesman and probably most famous pianist of his era, Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860-1941,) doesn’t seem to be an over statement. He called Die Meistersinger “the greatest work of genius ever achieved by an artist in any field of human activity.”

Why not find out for yourself -- while the opera is set in its correct time-frame? Do catch the encore on Wednesday, December 17th, 2014.