![]() ![]() At least until his slapstick performance in the climactic singing contest, baritone Johannes Martin Kränzle also gave a realistic and even sympathetic spin to the comic foil Beckmesser. Genial in the early going, crafty and inscrutable as the plot thickened later, Volle's Sachs dominated the scene not by vocal power but by the finest-grained acting of the night. Baritone Michael Volle, a veteran interpreter of this key role, brought a clear, forward-placed, intelligent and intelligible voice both to his long soliloquies and his interactions with other singers. ![]() Over the next six years, as the composer read Schopenhauer and other writers on the meaning of music and art, the opera expanded, and with it the role of Sachs as a kind of populist philosopher, musing at length on how, through inspiration and discipline, music can quell the Wahn (madness) of everyday life. The comic-opera plot that Wagner originally proposed to his publisher as quick to write, easy to produce, and a quick money-maker was simple enough: Boy meets girl, boy enters singing contest, boy (with help from his cobbler-mentor) wins contest and girl. And by the way, there is a plot, and characters, and singers to portray them-in Tuesday's case, an international cast of experienced Wagnerians, with widely varying vocal and acting styles. ![]() Gil Wechsler casts natural-looking light over it all, most notably the rising sun that spotlights Sachs in his shop. Rolf Langenfass dresses cast and chorus for work and festival (and bedtime too, in the riotous Act II finale). Günther Schneider-Siemssen's realistic sets transport the viewer to medieval town street and shop. In the revival that opened Tuesday, the 1997 production by Otto Schenk is still straight-up Wagner, right down to the composer's stage directions. But in his crabbed, mean-spirited way, he somehow managed to create a work that can raise spirits in all times of trouble. It's true that in saying so, Wagner, through his mouthpiece the cobbler-poet Hans Sachs, was referring to German culture, beset on all sides (as the composer saw it) by French, Italian, and Jewish influences. Besides its spectacle and gorgeous choruses, Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg came with a mid-pandemic message: Through art, we will survive. Photo: Richard Termine Coronavirus be damned, the Metropolitan Opera mounted the longest opera in the standard repertoire Tuesday night, cramming its stage with people singing at the top of their lungs, while music lovers sat together and watched for nearly six hours. Michael Volle as Hans Sachs and Lise Davidsen as Eva in the Metropolitan Opera production of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Met's epic "Meistersinger" sends a message of confidence and hopeYour browser indicates if you've visited this link ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
February 2023
Categories |