Any five-hour opera is gonna be a bit of a hard-sell, but making your comedy that long? That takes...well, it takes Richard Wagner, obviously. I really didn't know what to expect from this going in. Wagner has never struck me as a particularly jocose guy, so, I mean, is this going to work? At all?
It's all about sixteenth-century Meistersingers, who had a guild and did events and things. There's a knight named Walther von Stolzing. He's recently met Eve, the daughter of one of these guys, and they fell in love at first sight. But! There's a problem! Which is that her hand in marriage is going to be the prize in a song contest the next day! It's slightly less patriarchal than it sounds, since she's allowed to refuse anyone she doesn't want, but she can't marry outside the guild. So, six of one half dozen of the other. Also, most of them are already married, so they're excluded from the contest. I'm not sure how well-thought-out this idea was. But anyway, Walther, who is a talented musician but untrained, wants to join the guild quick so that he can compete and win Eve. But it's not so easy to get everyone's approval, and also there's an unlikeable Meistersinger, Beckmesser, who wants to woo Eve, though given that she has agency here, this clearly isn't much of a threat. Anyway, Walther wins everyone over in the end and there is general rejoicing, and this synopsis doesn't even mention who's really the main character, Hans Sachs, a real guy,a cobbler and the wisest Meistersinger, who helps to make sure everything works out for everyone. I'm sure I'm the five billionth person to note this, but this is kind of a comic inversion of Tannhäuser: in that, the hero has different sensibilities than the Meistersingers' and therefore is destroyed, but here, the outsider wins out. More evidence for the idea that Wagner himself was divided over this issue.
Well, anyway, no need to worry: he really did have it in him, and this is pretty great. Hard to imagine a five-hour opera feeling fleeter. Very appealing characters, great music, and the whole thing is just really lovable, which is something I never thought I'd say about anything by Wagner. I think what most people would consider the centerpiece is the absolutely great last scene of Act II, in which Beckmesser's efforts to serenade Eve outside her window at night are thwarted by Hans loudly singing while also loudly hammering the soles onto shoes he's making. It doesn't sound that funny when I described it, but I authentically el oh elled several times. Great stuff.
I chose this performance because I wanted to see James Morris as Hans, and I think I made an excellent choice. He gives the character the perfect mix of avuncular affability and wisdom, and he's always a great singer. I listened to an interview with him on the Met podcast, and he said it's his favorite character to play. You can see why. Ben Heppner (last and first seen by me in Fidelio) is very solid as Walther, and as for Karita Mattila as Eve, my initial kneejerk reaction--she's too old to be playing this character!--was quickly obviated by the force of her performance. Thomas Allen is effective as the hapless Beckmesser (I've heard people suggest that he's meant to be an anti-Semitic caricature, but boy do I not see that. It's not at all like Mime in Siegfried, and to make that come across, I feel like you'd have to make a conscious effort). We also have later Met in HD mainstays Matthew Polenzani and René Pape in small roles as Hans' apprentice, David; and Eve's father, Pogner, respectively (although can I just take the opportunity to say that maybe the one thing I didn't like about the opera was David's complaints about Hans inflicting physical violence on him when he screws up. It's meant to be comical, but to me it didn't fit the character and took away a bit from the story. Not a big bit, but a bit). It is a shame that Wagner didn't do more comedy; it seems to have fit him, and it's not so ponderous as some of his other operas.
Anyway, I didn't say this in the last paragraph because it would've kinda sucked the air out of the room, but another thing Morris says in the aforementioned podcast is that he first performed the opera in San Francisco, so he had to fly out from New Jersey. SOP for singers under new contracts was to leave the day before and start rehearsing the next day, but he was new to the role, so he asked if he could come a few weeks early to have more time to prepare. So everyone agreed and he did and...is it at this point super-obvious what the punchline of this seemingly pointless anecdote is? Well, if not: had he gone when he was supposed to have gone, he and his wife and children would have flown on United Airlines Flight 93 on 9/11. So his performance here (in December 2001) is even more a blessing.
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