Wagner Meistersinger, Horst Stein torrent

Wagner - Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg / Bernd Weikl, Siegfried Jerusalem, MariAnne Haggander, Hermann Prey, Graham Clark, Matthias Holle, Horst Stein, Bayreuth Opera (1984)




This production has been around on VHS for years, and I've been wearing out the local library's copy, waiting for the DVD. At last it's available, and it has been well worth the wait.

You may be wondering why I consider this to be the best video performance of Meistersinger; after all, there are at least three outstanding productions on DVD.

I'll be honest. One purely personal reason is that it was the first production of Meistersinger I ever saw. They say that the first time for anything is always special....

But putting that aside, let's consider the production on its merits.

Meistersinger is by far Wagner's most light-hearted, humorous, and above all human operas, but it's also his longest. It puts enormous demands on the performers, since in addition to putting Wagnerian demands on their stamina, it also requires them to show the essential humanity of their characters. Everyone in this opera is a human being, with good and bad points, and, importantly, with a depth of character - they can't be played as caricatures. This doesn't always happen.
What makes this production special is that every performer: the singers, the conductor, the orchestra, the musical and television directors, and every member of the chorus works together to produce a coherent and warmly human performance.

This is a Bayreuth production, directed by Wolfgang Wagner, with television direction by Brian Large. As one might expect, the quality is excellent.

Bernd Weikl is a superb Sachs - one might say the definitive Sachs - thoughtful, melancholy, but with a well-developed sense of fun. The director makes an excellent decision in the prelude to act 3, by showing Sachs peacefully reading his book, instead of the traditional Gables of Olde Nurnberg. Read more ›