Theatre review: Die Meistersinger Von Nürnberg

4 / 5 stars
Die Meistersinger Von Nürnberg

WAGNER was not a fellow to do things by halves.

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Wagner was not a fellow to do things by halves

His Mastersingers started at 4pm and went on until 9.45 (including two 35-minute intervals) but the non-stop magnificence of his music and some glorious singing made the time race past. Unlike many opera composers, Wagner never believed in giving the audience time to applaud. His music is just carried along on huge unstoppable waves of emotion which allow no interruption. 

To add to the emotion, this is Kasper Holten's final production as Director of Music at the Royal Opera and it is typically full of ideas, some brilliant and some dubious. His six-year stint at the ROH has seen more boo-ing than the old place is used to, but also some very striking and unusual productions that have gained much acclaim. His depature will be missed - though not perhaps by all. 

This production, however, was most marked by the excellence of the music. Antonio Pappano conducted impeccably, bringing out the power of the music to glorious effect, holding together the huge cast and the orchestra, which occasionally had threatened to escape from his control, and handling the dynamics faultlessly throughout to bring out the best from the orchestra.

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The cast was equally magnificent

The cast was equally magnificent, led by Bryn Terfel who seemed a little underpowered at the start but grew in strength as his role in the plot developed. He played the role of Hans Sachs, the poet/shoemaker, who acts as a brake on the pompousness and extravagance of the Mastersingers of Nuremberg, especially when they are singing to compete for the hand of their leader's daughter.

The trouble is that Eva, the daughter (sung with a delightful mixture of vulnerability and inner strength by Rachel Willis-Sørensen), has fallen in love with Walther Von Stolzing, a nobleman but an outsider whom the Nuremberg Mastersingers don't want  in their group. Sung by Gwyn Hughes Jones, he really did sound like a man destined to win bioth then girl and a singing competition.

Most of all, however, Sixtus Beckmesser, their official competition marker, does not want Walther around because he has evil ambitions to win Eva for himself. With Wagner's powerful music, it is easy to forget that Meistersinger is a comedy (a heavy German comedy, admittedly), but Beckmesser is a truly comic character in the mould of Malvolio in Twelfth Night. He is arrogant, vainglorious and pompous, all qualities brought out splendidly by Johannes Martin Kränzle in this production.  

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The show was played at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London

With the rest of the cast excellently supporting the lead singers, especially Allan Clayton in excellent form, both singing and acting, as the apprentice David, this is a musical treat, but the production itself did not please everyone, as a small but vigorous  amount of booing showed at the end. In this case, however, I thought it rather rude, for there were some particularly fine points in Holten's direction aided by Mia Stensgaard's set design.

The latter really came into its own as the riotous end of the second act. When Eva is trying to elope with Walther, Beckmesser is trying to seduce her with his singing, and Sachs is wrecking Beckmesser's plans by introducing some unwanted percussion as he hammers the soles onto a pair of shoes, the action is combined with complete mayhem as they are all interrupted by some sort of carnival. As this progresses, the set seems to turn itself upside down and inside out, with some acrobats hanging upside down and others just romping around the disintegrating set. 

That was wonderful to watch, but relied heavily on Holten's vision of the whole opera taking place in some sort of gentlemen's club or just outside it, though at times it was difficult to know where we were meant to be. 

With Hans Sachs carrying out his shoemaking in a Gentlemen's club, it was all rather confusing, the more so for anyone who did not know the traditional locations of the opera. 

For anyone loving the music, knowing the opera but wanting something a little different, this was a five-star performance, but for anyone who hadn't seen it before, it must have been difficult to follow. Worst of all, for anyone wanting a traditional production ... well I suppose they were the few rudely booing at the end.  Personally, I loved it.

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