Veit Pogner – Christof
Fischesser
Kunz Vogelgsang – Kevin Conners
Konrad Nachtigall – Christian
Rieger
Sixtus Beckmesser – Markus
Eiche
Fritz Kothner – Eike Wilm
Schulte
Balthasar Zorn – Ulrich Reß
Ulrich Eißlinger – Stefan
Heibach
Augustin Moser – Thorsten
Scharnke
Hermann Ortel – Friedemann
Röhlig
Hans Schwarz – Peter Lobert
Hans Foltz – Christoph
Stephinger
Walther von Stolzing – Jonas
Kaufmann
David – Benjamin Bruns
Eva – Sara Jakubiak
Magdalene – Okka von der
Damerau
Night Watchman – Tareq Nazmi
David Bösch (director)
Patrick Bannwart (set designs)
Meentje Nielsen (costumes)
Falko Herold (video)
Michael Bauer (lighting)
Rainer Karlitschek (dramaturgy)
Chorus and Extra Chorus of the
Bavarian State Opera (chorus master: Sören Eckhoff)
Bavarian State Orchestra
Kirill Petrenko (conductor)
Die
Meistersinger at the
theatre in which it was premiered, on Wagner’s birthday: an inviting prospect
by any standards, still more so given the director, conductor, and cast, still
more so given the opportunity to see three different productions within little
more than a couple of months). Glyndebourne would come only four days later; my
principal point of – inevitable – comparison would therefore be with Stefan
Herheim’s staging, first seen in Salzburg,
but later (this March) in Paris.
Herheim’s production is, unsurprisingly, one for the ages. I have no doubt that
it will reveal more upon every subsequent encounter. It comes, perhaps, closer
to Wagner’s reconciliations. However, any good Adornian – is there such a
thing? Are we not, necessarily, all at best bad Adornians? – will warn you of
the dangers of such positive Hegelianisms. David Bösch’s staging gradually
reveals itself to be quite the necessary negative indictment, with respect
above all to two particular (related) aspects of the work: violence and gender.
If less all-encompassing than Herheim’s staging – what is not? – then it lays
claim to be the first Meistersinger
production in my experience to address the work from a feminist standpoint. It
also arguably offers the most intriguing treatment – I shall not say ‘solution’,
for surely there is none – to the ‘Beckmesser problem’. Katharina
Wagner’s notorious Bayreuth staging might have given it a run for its money,
had only the competence of her craft matched the provocative thinking of her
dramaturge, Robert Sollich. Above all, though, this proved to be great musical
drama: everyone committed to something far greater than the sum of its parts,
and that includes ‘parts’ such as Jonas Kaufmann and Kirill Petrenko.
 |
| Walther arriving in Nuremberg |
Let us start, however, with
Bösch’s staging, with excellent designs by Patrick Bannwart and Meentje Nielsen.
We are in the 1950s. What could be more apt? And no, I am not being sarcastic.
This is a work concerned with reconstruction, set in a city which, more than
most, has had to be concerned with reconstruction. Wagner, I suppose I should
reiterate for the nth time, was in no sense concerned to present a
historical Nuremberg; the ever-present – well, nearly – spirit of Bach makes
that abundantly clear. And did not the 1950s see ‘New Bayreuth’, in
particularly Wieland Wagner’s Meistersinger
ohne Nürnberg? As John Deathridge once acidly commented, when Wieland spoke of “the clearing away of
old lumber” (Entrümpelung), … [he
produced] stage pictures bereft of their “reactionary” ethos — and, as sceptics
were prone to add, most of their content as well.’ Indeed, and if many in the
audience had more to hide even than Wieland, he had his own reasons too. The
relationship between provincialism and the dreadful reconstructionalism of the
1950s is complicated yet undeniable. Lest we forget, 1955 was the year in which
the West German Army was (re)founded, denying its origins in what had gone before;
this was also the period of increasingly prevalent terraced dynamics and sewing-machine geometries
of Bach performances by minor German chamber orchestras, performances that
would soon metamorphose into ‘authenticke’ claims, deluded and cynically
deluding, to ‘restore’ Baroque practice. ‘They say Bach, [but] mean Telemann,’ as Adorno
unforgettably put it. Wagner meant – and means Bach, and vice versa. There is nastiness as well as homeliness in
provincialism; Bösch draws out the former, in a useful corrective to the norm.
 |
| David (Benjamin Bruns) and Walther |
What might seem a nostalgia for the
period and its ‘popular culture’ – similarly in Bösch’s Munich L’Orfeo – is revealed to be far more
complicated than that. For one thing, what does ‘popular culture’ mean? Such is
a problem at the heart of the opera, at the heart of relationships between the
Masters and the populace, and Sachs’s suggestion of testing the rules. And such
has arguably become still more so given the rise of what some of us are
old-fashioned enough still to regard with, the Frankfurt School, as the Culture
Industry. If resistance is to come, it will be more likely to come from Helmut
Lachenmann than from the world of commercial music, successfully masquerading
as ‘of the people’. And so, when microphones and various other paraphernalia of
the recording industry – ‘Classical’ in the deadly marketing-speak of that
world, then as well as now – are put in place, we sense, amongst many other
things, an act of domination such has been inflicted upon works by Bach, now
more or less unperformable, and upon every other aspect of our ‘administered’
world and lives. Although the Personenregie
of Bösch’s staging is always detailed, interesting, telling, it is only – as in
the work itself – towards the end of the third act, in the Singschule, that things come closer into conceptual focus. It is,
as always in the bourgeois state, with violence that that is accomplished.
David has already, most intriguingly, seemed a nastier, vainer, and yes, more interesting
character than usual, with the strong implication that his penchant for small-scale
violent behaviour is owed in part not only to his provincialism but also to his
inability truly to create. Walther has tried to defend David when the
apprentices, at the beginning of the scene, attacked him, but he will have none
of it; outsiders are not to be welcomed, perhaps not even for Magdalene’s sake.
Will David prove a second Beckmesser? We shall see; it is, at least at this
stage, the first Beckmesser who provides the shock – literally.
The electric shocks administered to
Walther, forcibly restrained in his chair, by the Marker are the work of what
Gudrun Esslin would soon call the Auschwitz generation; and as Ennslin went on,
there is of course no arguing with them. That, despite, or perhaps because, of
Beckmesser’s – and Pogner’s – relative attractiveness (relative to how we
usually see them, and indeed to the definitely older-school Kothner). Who,
after all, has not occasionally found something of attraction in the discipline
of fascism, especially when (s)he has been emboldened by readily available
bottles of Meisterbräu? Guilds had
never been as stable as nostalgia suggested; that is surely part of Wagner’s
meaning here. But Bösch brings already-existing divisions to the foreground. Some
Masters look – costumes crucial here – and act with greater modernity, or at
least in greater fashion than others. If the Guild is keeping things together –
and such, of course, was the crux of nineteenth-century Romantic and Hegelian
defences in the face of liberal attacks upon them – then it is not clear
whether it will succeed for much longer. ‘Reconstruction’ tends to incite – as any
Stolzing, Ensslin, or Lachenmann would tell you.
 |
Beckmesser (Markus Eiche) and Hans Sachs
(Wolfgang Koch) |
Sachs’s van – ‘Sachs’ says the neon,
definitely not of Fifth Avenue – captures our attention at the beginning of the
second act. There is no doubt that the mise-en-scene
is of a grimmer 1950s: doubtless necessary in some ways given the cost of war, but
this is not a suburb of joy. It is not the Munich we see in the second Heimat; nor is it the Nuremberg the
tourist will see. But it is there. Beckmesser’s virtuosity comes to the fore.
He is not a fraud, although he may be unimaginative; he has craft, even if he
does not have art; he is, moreover, certainly not a mere figure of fun. His piccolo guitar to Walther’s full-size
version invites a number of reflections. Yet his song works, in its way:
perhaps of another age, another age that most likely never was, but such is
reconstruction. Eva seems even more girlish than usual, almost Barbie-like; I
asked myself whether we should ever see a feminist production that would
address the monstrous nature of her treatment. The violence of the Prügel-Fuge’s staging eclipses any I
have seen. Too often, we forget that there is real violence involved. (Perhaps
Wagner did so too; if so, he stands as much in need of correction as anyone
else.) Here, David’s deeds with baseball bat mark him out as every inch the
neo-fascist; Pegida would welcome him with open arms. We then begin to wonder:
what will the guild become in the hands of his generation. Is Sachs the last
hope, rather than the harbinger? Likewise, how will Walther turn out? For ever
Tariq Ali, think how many Blairs, or would-be-Blairs there have been. At the
close, the Night Watchman (in modern policeman’s garb) is dealt with by the
remaining small gang of young townsfolk. They take him back to his car and send
him on his way, but it is made clear that he has no choice; this is their manor. Crossing themselves
beforehand, they have mimicked the (deliberately?) incongruous procession at
the opening; they know how to use traditional forms when it serves their
purpose. The final punishment beating takes place as the curtain – and one of
the thugs’ baseball bats – falls.
 |
| Beckmesser dragged to his beating |
‘Sachs’ has lost its first and
almost its second ‘s’ when we catch up, the morning after the night before. Make
of that what you will. Walther has spent his night in the van. Beckmesser, when
he hobbles back, is suicidal – quite understandably. It is discovery of the
poem that turns his mood (just enough) around. Sachs is not the only one so to
suffer, although Beckmesser would never have the imagination, nor the
understanding, to come up with the Wahn
monologue. Still, the ubiquity of Wahn
is more than usually, atmospherically present. Yes, as Michael Tanner has
pointed out, the work is about ‘coping’; and coping is difficult in a world
such as this, which is one reason why we indulge in deluded and deluding
reconstruction in the first place. Walther is too young, too callow really to
understand; he and Eva are unable to keep their hands off each other, on top of
the van, as Sachs confronts a further bout of depression. The violence of Wolfgang
Koch’s – and the Bavarian State Orchestra’s – outburst here, the former
occasionally edging towards Sprechgesang,
even towards Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder,
was especially telling, and complemented, extended the production memorably, indeed
frighteningly. But Walther eventually appreciates his selfishness, and comes
down to help: a touching moment, especially in light of such darkness all
around.
Let us leave the staging as some
would doubtless like the work to be left, before the Festwiese. Unlike them, those who misunderstand the Quintet and do
not appreciate that its moment of ‘beauty’ is quite deliberately foreshortened,
we shall return, but I should rather deal with Bösch’s final scene at the end.
(Think of this, perhaps, as a rupture to the account of the staging, just as
Peter Konwitschny once ruptured the aura of this allegedly problematical scene,
in order, controversially, to put it mildly, to deal with the allegations, most
of them unfounded.)
I have never heard the work
conducted better ‘live’ than by Kirill Petrenko. I was less convinced by his
Bayreuth Ring performances than many
were; perhaps I did not hear him at his best. This, however, was Wagner
conducting – in a work in which I have heard even Daniel
Barenboim and Daniele
Gatti struggle to reach their highest standards – to speak of in the same
breath as that of Bernard Haitink (my first). Petrenko’s command of the
Wagnerian melos, assisted by, indeed
expressed in, the outstanding playing of the Bavarian State Orchestra, was
outstanding at every level. There was no doubting the overall structure, but
that structure was formed by the needs of the moment, by the Schoenbergian
working-out of the material, rather than imposed, Alfred Lorenz-like, upon it.
This was not a David; this was a young Sachs. He could, indeed, hold back or
press on when the singer seemed to be suggesting it, playing the orchestra like
his own piano, albeit without the slightest hint of shallow virtuosity, for
this was no Beckmesser either. But it would not jar; indeed, performance and
work seemed to form one another, which, in this of all works, is surely the
point. The orchestra had nothing to fear from the most exalted of comparisons;
rather, those with whom it might have been compared, should fear them. Likewise
the chorus, whether in terms of vocal heft and colour, of clarity of line, or
of stage movement. The dialectic between individual and society (and changing
conceptions thereof) was brought vividly to life here and elsewhere.
I took a little while to settle down
to Koch’s Hans Sachs. That is partly personal, I think; to my ears – and indeed
to my eyes – he somehow seems more to be an Alberich. That I found
disconcerting, but it was my problem, really. There was no doubting the
intelligence of his portrayal, and in the third act, my reservations
evaporated. Here, there seemed to be a perfect marriage of Wort and Ton, of Oper and Drama. (And yes, I know that is not quite what Wagner meant in the
latter case, but it is considerably closer than it might initially seem.) He took
us through Sachs’s struggles, and took us through some more. There was no false
reconciliation of ‘mere’ geniality, although manipulation of Wahn might prescribe it, successfully or
otherwise, if as a palliative rather than as a cure.
Kaufmann’s Walther avoided the
drawback of his first performance in the role (I think), in concert at the 2006
Edinburgh Festival. There, it was an astonishing performance, in which Kaufmann
tired a little towards the end. Here, he was perhaps less golden of vocal tone,
more baritonal, but that is an observation rather than an æsthetic judgement. There
was no problem whatsoever with his pacing. And my goodness, he could act! The
puppyish enthusiasm of the first acts, the inspiration Walther drew from Eva,
whilst showing off to her, not unlike a tennis player at Wimbledon with his
girlfriend in the crowd, the mixture of enforced, societal chivalry and the
arousal of deeper, or at least more primal, urges: those and many more acutely
observed moments denied the manufactured boundary between ‘musical performance’
and ‘acting’. If we are to talk of ‘Wagner’s intentions’, let it be in that
manner.
Benjamin Bruns had a difficult time
of it. This, after all, was anything but the typical David, but Bruns had us
believe in the ‘new’ – or should that be ‘restored’ – character, his impotent
(often, at least) rage as chilling as the ‘purely’ vocal delivery was
thoughtful and indeed often beautiful. Sara Jakubiak really took to the demands
of her role (on which more below). Visually and vocally striking, this was an
Eva both at home in and estranged from her Nuremberg. Okka von der Damerau’s
Magdalene brought a deeper, luxuriant vocal colour to the stage, again with
clear ‘dramatic’ as well as vocal commitment. Tareq Nazmi’s Night Watchman was
deep and dark of tone: just what the doctor has always ordered.
 |
Pogner (Christof Fischesser) and
Kothner (Eike Wilm Schulte) |
Of the other Masters, Christof
Fischesser was definitely first among equals: handsomely, even suavely sung, a
Pogner of ambition in which he was likely to succeed, rather than someone
entering his twilight years. Kothner was played
movingly by Eike Wilm Schulte, with the relative stiffness of his delivery, particularly
striking in the first act, a move to distinguish this ‘old-school’ Master from
the next generation(s). Markus Eiche’s Beckmesser was of the first class: more
plausible a suitor than most, intelligently, often beautifully, sung, with a
fine marriage of dignity and, increasingly, desperation.
Back, then, to the Festwiese. Who owns the guild, or at least its products? A corporation,
albeit in the modern rather than the archaic sense: Pognervision. Privilege, be
it of class, of gender, of other varieties, is always likely to emerge
victorious. The early televisual variety show we see might seem ‘popular’ but
it is deeply – and indeed shallowly – manipulative. (Admittedly, Bösch has
nothing on ‘real life’, in this country at least, Tory Culture Secretary Jeremy
Hunt appointing his friend, the creator of Big
Brother, Peter Bazalgette, to chair the Arts Council, etc.) Falko Herold’s video work provides ‘titles’
for each Master (‘individual’ or styled to be corporate?) as he enters the
scene, just ‘like on the television’. There is, of course, something for all
the family – within strict limits. David and his camp dancers suggest what the
real view of ‘deviance’ is: perhaps it will be tolerated as a harmless joke,
but as for any serious attack on patriarchy… David is not in on the joke,
anyway, and his humiliated by them: again, a proto-Beckmesser. When forced (‘peer
pressure’ is like that) to drink too many shots, to prove his ‘real’
masculinity, he falls paralytic, unable to perform his functions (doubtless in
any sense).
 |
| Magdalene (Okka von der Damerau), Beckmesser, and Eva, as the town clerk would claim his unwilling 'prize' |
The cruelty meted out to
Beckmesser will be even worse - although we should remember, and we are minded, that he too would essentially buy Eva, our bartered bride, and he makes clear his desire to possess her, even against her will, so is no 'victim' at all in that very important sense. Bedecked in gaudy ‘variety’ gold, in
which he is clearly anything but comfortable, Beckmesser has been set up to fail. ‘Entertainment’
is the name of the game, and we are reminded of the cruelty of a work in which
the comedy, in the common sense at least, is within, is of characters laughing
at another; it is comedy, then, at which we should feel uncomfortable, and we
do. Eva, who has learned a great deal during the course of the work, is
increasingly disgusted by what she sees. Kothner is ‘marketed’ as celebrating
his fiftieth year in office; even a ‘tribute’, indeed perhaps especially a
tribute, must bear the ‘ratings’ in mind. (The relative stiffness of his
delivery in the first act, via-à-vis that of Pogner and Beckmesser, thus falls
into greater relief.) When Eva thinks that Sachs has fallen in with her father’s
sell-off – for surely this ‘show’, with related ‘philanthropy’, is as much for
business as anything else – she cannot bear to look at him any more. Whilst the
crowd, manipulated by the ‘event’, sings his praises, she not only turns away;
from her balcony, she haplessly throws the contents of her glass in his
direction. No one notices; on stage, that is, for we do.
 |
| Sachs on stage, receiving the crowd's acclamation, before Eva (above with Pogner) turns her back in disgust |
Yet Sachs is wiser than most,
as we have always known. He realises that all has gone awry at the moment when
most – whether on stage or in the typical audience – think it has been resolved.
Has Walther joined the guild? It is not clear (deliberately so, I presume). In
a more fundamental sense, however, Sachs is deeply troubled rather than
triumphant. Beckmesser returns. Out of desperation, he tries to shoot dead the presumed
author of his misfortunes, but falls before being able to carry out his punishment.
The idea, we presume, was to let the poison, or whatever it was, do its work
following the shooting. That may or may not be metaphorical. Of course, it does
not work out as intended. It never did for Beckmesser; it never does for
reconstruction. Well, not unless you are Wagner – or Herheim, and then you acknowledge
that it is not what most people think it is. And even then…
