Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg

Introduced by David Pickard, former General Director of Glyndebourne

Called ‘grippingly original' by Opera magazine and its classical staging ‘a masterstroke' by The Independent, Glyndebourne's first-ever staging of Wagner's grand Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg was a landmark in the company's history when it was staged in 2011.

David McVicar's finely detailed production shifts the action to the early 19th century of Wagner's youth, when German nationalism was surging in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars.

Wagner's only mature comedy, Die Meistersinger takes the art of songwriting and singing as its theme in telling the story of the historical cobbler Hans Sachs (1494-1576).

He is the most celebrated of the Master Singers, a group of amateur poets and musicians who devised a complex system of rules for composing and performing their songs.

When the free-thinking young Walther von Stolzing strives to win their song competition, whose prize is his beloved Eva, wise Sachs must weigh the value of rule-breaking inspiration against that time-honoured tradition, while grappling with the viability of his own dreams.

The composer’s only mature comedy, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is often seen as ‘an anomaly’ among Wagner’s operas: the only original plot Wagner devised and the only one rooted in a real place and time, rejecting gods and goddesses to tell a simple story about familiar, everyday people. The result is a work of tremendous warmth and truth – a musical celebration of art, artists and humanity.

Although composed in broadly the same style of sweeping, continuous music as Tristan und Isolde or the Ring cycle, Die Meistersinger breaks many of the rules Wagner himself set-out for opera, incorporating conventions like verse and chorus structures, arias, ensembles and a ballet. These more old-fashioned elements – the four-square rhythms and glowing, affirmative harmonies established in the radiant C major Prelude – reflect the traditional, rule-bound society of Renaissance Nuremberg that he paints in a score gleaming with civic and national pride, gilded with melody and mighty choral statements.

Gerald Finley sings the role of Hans Sachs, a performance The Guardian heralded as ‘extraordinary both vocally and dramatically'.

Featuring The London Philharmonic Orchestra / The Glyndebourne Chorus

© Glyndebourne Productions Ltd. Photo: Alastair Muir