Tuesday 24 February 2015

A Great Operatic Comedy

I'm using the term "operatic comedy" instead of "comic opera" for a reason.  Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg is a comedy in the classical sense of a piece that invites us to laugh at the characters while ruefully recognizing ourselves in them.  It's not  by any means a lightweight operetta -- after all, this is Wagner!  Indeed, measured by the clock, it's his longest single music drama.  But it's a humane, warm-hearted work that beguiles us with its inherent idea that perhaps, just this once, all can indeed be put right with the world.


A lot of the warm-hearted character of Die Meistersinger derives from a simple musical fact.  In this opera, Wagner set aside many of the advanced chromatic harmonies colouring his other works, as well as his developing mastery of flexible tempo and phrasing.  Die Meistersinger operates largely in a world of straightforward diatonic harmonies, with major keys predominating, and contains far more simple 4-bar musical phrases than any other work by the mature Wagner.



The characters in Die Meistersinger are so developed in terms of their motives and their actions that the score totally demands powerful Wagnerian singers who are also fine actors.  In this piece especially, the old bad tradition of stand-and-deliver singing would be absolutely fatal to the impact of the whole work. 



This opera also raises a problem which is almost unique among Wagner's mature masterworks (discounting his earlier operas, Lohengrin and those before it).  That is the need to plan and to stage scenes with large numbers of chorus members who need to be very actively in motion from time to time, according to the demands of the drama.  Parsifal is a rather different case because the choral scenes are so strongly ritualistic that a great deal of action is neither necessary nor desirable.  Really, the only comparisons in mature Wagner are found in the Nibelheim scenes of Das Rheingold and in the wedding festival of Götterdämmerung.  


And although I haven't counted bars, I suspect there is more work for the chorus (certainly for the female chorus) than in all the rest of the mature Wagner works combined!  Die Meistersinger thus joins the short list of operas in which the chorus basically serves as an additional, and pretty significant, character  in its own right -- another feature of the score which the staging necessarily must acknowledge.



Die Meistersinger is also an opera in which staging has to at least suggest Germany in the Renaissance.  A strongly modern setting, which would evoke some very different and very contemporary social attitudes as well, would end up in conflict with the society so clearly delineated in the text as written.  For these reasons, I've always felt that this opera works best when placed in a visual setting that gives more than a mere nod in the direction of Nuremberg.



The Metropolitan Opera's current production, directed in the 1990s by Otto Schenk, (which I saw yesterday live in HD at the Cineplex) goes much further than simply a suggestion.  Gunther Schneider-Siemssen's stage setting is not merely period-apt, but heavily realistic and very detailed.  Since the opera requires four different sets among its three acts, the Met necessarily has to schedule two lengthy intermissions of 45 minutes each (no bad thing for the audience in such a long work!) to allow the huge and heavy sets to be dismantled and replaced.


From the viewpoint of the audience, the richly detailed settings and costumes land us squarely in the proper time and place -- Nuremberg in the 1500s -- and allow us to appreciate the nuances of character relationships appropriate to that society.  We also got the fascinating opportunity to appreciate the stagecraft involved.  A set of cameras were used backstage to film the first major set change from start to finish, and this footage was shown on screen during the intermission, complete with sound.


Costuming also very aptly highlighted the social gradations of the cast.  Clothes were for the most part sober and workaday, but even the festive costumes of the final festival scene were dressy without becoming over-elaborate.  The one exception, of course, was the final costume of Walther (the one nobleman in the story) which rightly made him stand out like a peacock among the townsfolk -- a doubly-apt simile since his costume was coloured in the hues of a peacock's tail.


Many of the scenes require a good deal of movement on the part of the characters, not surprising in a comic opera where confusions of identity and concealments of one sort or another are de rigeur.  The sets allowed ample space for the principals to move about, with the necessary nooks and crannies (read: hideouts) all well placed.  The hiding place of Eva and Walther in Act 2 was especially good, a shadowy corner well downstage left where they could easily be seen by the audience but wouldn't pull focus from the main action in the centre and down right.


Sadly, the one exception to this quality of fine stage pictures occurred in the two biggest scenes with the chorus, the riot at the end of Act 2 and the festival procession at the start of the final scene.  The Met Chorus, wonderful as it is, took up so much space that only a small area down centre was available for the various shenanigans that had to occur.  I saw the opera staged over 20 years ago at the Royal Opera House in London, and there the riot scene was a whirl of motion and action -- admittedly with a much barer setting.  Somehow, the director has to build in more motion because the Act 2 ending, as staged, hardly justified the description of "riot" which is applied to it by Beckmesser in the next act.


The singing cast was universally strong, as you would expect from the Met, and all the principals were fine actors as well as fine singers.  Mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill was a warm-toned Magdalena, with apt face and body language for this servant with a heart of gold who is also devoted to the great scheme.  The apprentice David was sung with great verve and precision by Paul Appleby, a young tenor who will certainly be one to watch in coming years.  He was also notable as one of the strongest actors in the company.


Johannes Martin Kränzle made a very strong Beckmesser, bringing out the all the character's fussiness and pedantry while still making him unexpectedly sympathetic.  It's far too easy to turn Beckmesser into an unlikable old fool, but this was a more human and believable portrayal.  His singing, too, was excellent,  maintaining pitch clearly in even the fastest and most awkward passages in this challenging role.


Bass Hans-Peter König sang with warmth and feeling as Pogner, although his acting was much more limited than other company members.


Annette Dasch was a charming Eva.  At first she seemed a little limited in her range of both vocal and physical expression, but by Act 3 she was fully warmed up in both areas.  The opening of the famous quintet was a sheer delight as her clear soprano began with a mere thread and then slowly swelled to glorious full voice.


Johan Botha was a fine Walther, in one of the most challenging of all tenor roles.  The poor man has to appear in all three acts, spend a great deal of time on the stage, and deliver three major songs, the last of which -- the daunting Prize Song -- soars to the greatest heights with the fullest of expressive singing demanded.  It's by no means an exercise merely in pumping out sound.  Botha was certainly beginning to sound a bit tired by this point (has there ever been a Walther who didn't sound tired in the Prize Song?) but he still gave it his all, and richly deserved the cheers at the final curtain.


Which brings us to the heart and soul of any Meistersinger: the role of Hans Sachs.  This surely ranks as the richest, most complex, most heart-warming character Wagner ever created.  Baritone Michael Volle remarked in his intermission interview that he felt Sachs was Wagner's portrayal of the man that he wished he could have been, an interesting idea.  Volle combined strong and flexible singing with first-rate acting to create the character in all his vivid and varied personality.  This Sachs was, by turns, warm, funny, bitter, sharp, depressed, exhilarated, and profound, just as he had to be.  It was, by any standards, a memorable performance.


That covers the characters individually.  They also worked well as a team.  In the complex ensemble passages of Act 1 and Act 2 you could easily dive in and single out any one voice to follow, as the balance of all the voices was exemplary.  This was also true of the magnificent Quintet in Act 3, and here the beauty and poise of the singing actually brought a lump in my throat and tears to my eyes.
So, of course, did the final chorus that crowns the whole work, recapitulating the closing bars of the famous overture.  The Met Chorus were simply splendid here, having carefully saved their biggest, grandest sound of the entire evening for this final one and a half minutes of glory.


And speaking of glory, let us by no means neglect the magnificent playing of the Met's orchestra under their music director James Levine.  Sadly, Maestro Levine now has to conduct from a wheelchair but this in no way diminishes his obvious love for this score, and the playing of the orchestra under his careful direction was exemplary throughout.


It was unquestionably a long evening -- the cinecast began at 6:00pm and ended a few minutes after midnight -- but it was wonderfully rewarding.


This was the final repeat broadcast of this year's video production.  However, if you would like to see and hear the piece on video, there's a DGG DVD of an earlier staging of the same production from some years back, with James Morris in the central role of Hans Sachs and also under Levine's baton, which is still available.

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