Class 8: Three Nurembergs

A. The Meistersinger Legacy

1. Title Slide 1 (Panorama from the Nuremberg Chronicle)

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868) was the second of the two “easy” operas that Richard Wagner (1813–83) wrote while he was in the middle of the Ring; the other was Tristan und Isolde. There is nothing short or easy about either opera, of course; Act III of Die Meistersinger alone is almost as long as the whole of Das Rheingold. But it is lighter; it is Wagner’s only mature comedy. It is also the only opera with a wholly original story, without a literary property behind it, the only one without any element of magic or fantasy, and the only one set in a specific time and place, including some historical characters.

2. Rothenburg ob der Tauber

That place is Nuremberg, in Southeast Germany; the time is the mid-16th century; the people are the guild of singer-songwriters that grew up among the master tradesmen of the city—one of whom was the real shoemaker-poet Hans Sachs (1494–1576). Nuremberg, unfortunately, was bombed heavily in the Second World War, so to get a sense of what it looked like, I have to show you either old illustrations, or drive about an hour west to Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Or we can look at it as represented in Wagner’s music and a traditional production, like the old one by Otto Schenk at the Met. I am playing the first and last minute of Act II: first, the apprentices hanging decorations for the Feast of Saint John (Johannistag) the next day (no titles, though), and then the deserted street by moonlight after the Watchman’s horn has dispersed the riot, and everyone has gone home.

3. Schenk production: Act II opening and closing 4. Three Nurembergs

I show this because it is jolly, folksy stuff at the start and ends in moonlit nostalgia for a vanished past. But that’s also the trouble. For in fact there are at least three Nurembergs: the medieval world of Wagner’s imagination, the site of the annual rallies of the Nazi party between 1923 and 1938, and the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials held by the Allied powers beginning in 1945. You see all three on this slide. A cheap shot on my part? There are many who would not think so. They regard Wagner as the official composer of the Nazi regime, and therefore of the Holocaust. Perhaps Wagner himself cannot be blamed for Hitler’s later obsession with him, but his anti-Semitism is documented, and his otherwise comic opera ends with Hans Sachs’s paean to “Holy German Art,” decrying pernicious foreign influences. And it is a fact that when the Bayreuth Wagner Festival reopened after WW1 in 1924, Meistersinger was the opening selection, and the audience followed Hans Sachs’s peroration by singing “Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles.” So there is definitely a case to answer.

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5. Some examples of Third Reich sculpture 6. Antisemitic caricature from Der Stürmer

And in answering that case, a director needs a means of explicitly referencing the past, in images that the audience will recognize. So let me make sure we are all on the same page. The first slide shows the kind of heroic sculpture that surrounded the stadium at Nuremberg, emphasizing the clean-cut strength of the Nazi hero. And many apologies for this, one of the hateful Antisemitic caricatures they would have seen weekly in the Nazi magazine Der Stürmer.

7. Bayreuth Artistic Directors

I mentioned Bayreuth. It is the shrine of the Wagner cult, the town where King Ludwig II of Bavaria built him a theater to stage his works and where a Wagner festival is held every summer. It is in effect a family business, with the artistic directorship passing from the composer to his widow, then to his son, then after the War to his grandsons; it is now in the hand of his great-granddaughter Katharina Wagner. Conductors at Bayreuth have always come from all over; the Festival began inviting guest stage directors about fifty years ago; but until 2017, Die Meistersinger had never been directed at Bayreuth by a non- family member; it was sacred.

There was one major break with tradition, however. In his first Meistersinger after the War, director Wieland Wagner made radical changes to the traditional staging. Let me demonstrate with a photograph of the very old Act II sets that Hitler would have seen in 1943, and dissolve it into Wieland Wagner’s version that I myself saw in 1958.

8. Wieland transition [0:30] 9. — still from the above

Wags scorned it as Die Meistersinger ohne Nürnberg, or “The Mastersingers Without Nuremberg.” But Wieland knew what he was doing. Without all that nostalgia for a German past, the audiences could at least listen to the music as it came off the page, and put aside those other associations. Or try to. For the Wagners at Bayreuth, a family and town directly associated with Hitler, it was not enough just to wipe the slate clean. At some time, they were going to have to be proactive in addressing the issue head on.

10. Katharina and Kosky

And Katharina, bless her, did exactly that. Her first Bayreuth staging of the opera, in 2007, was a big messy affair, deliberately provocative and not very well-focused, but nonetheless willing to ask the question, “Was my great-grandfather a Fascist?” I shall show some glimpses of that towards the end of the class. When the time for a new production came round again, in 2017, Katharina for the first time with this particular opera hired a director not called Wagner. And not only that, an Australian who refers to himself as a “Gay Jewish kangaroo,” Barrie Kosky.

The Katharina and Kosky productions are the second and third of my “Three Nurembergs,” the traditional approaches being the first. I wish I had time to give equal time to all three. But I must content myself with describing the traditional approach, giving a couple of clips of the Katharina, and devoting

— 2 — most of my time to the Kosky, which is not only the most explicit in addressing the anti-Semitism, but also the easiest to follow in terms of telling the story.

B. Very Briefly, the Story

Die Meistersinger is about two things: romance, and more importantly art. The romance I’ll show you in a little slide show that I have put together with shots from the Schenck production at the Met. Basically, the tenor hero, Walther von Stoltzing, wants to marry Eva, the daughter of Veit Pogner, the goldsmith. But he has promised her to the winner of the song competition to be held the next day. So in order to marry her, Walther has not only to win the competition, but also to qualify as a Mastersinger in order even to be allowed to enter. It is a daunting proposition.

11. Slide show of the Schenk production 12. Beckmesser pictures

According to the old-school Mastersingers, that “Holy German Art” is a matter of carefully-preserved rules. Sachs believes that Walter’s song extends them, but does not brush them away entirely. The villain in the piece is Beckmesser, the town clerk and Marker of the guild. Here he is in an old photograph and in the Katharina Wagner production, with a huge pile of rule books in front of him. We shall see in a moment how Barrie Kosky treats him.

Structurally, the opera hinges around a number of song-trials, not just the one at the end. Walther must audition for the Masters in Act I, and much of the act consist of people explaining to rules to him, but he fails anyway. Beckmesser himself sings a wooing song to Eva (as he believes; it is really her maid) in Act II. In Act III, Walther improvises a possible Prize Song and Sachs writes it down. Beckmesser steals the manuscript and tries to sing it at the competition, but fails horribly. It is up to Walther to sing it properly and win Eva’s hand.

C. Wagner and the Assimilated Jew

13. Real characters in the prelude

Wagner set the first act in a Nuremberg church. But Barrie Kosky begins before that, in the salon at Wahnfried, Wagner’s house next door. The idea is that the composer has finished the score, and has invited some friends and family round to read it through—which he did. You will see Richard Wagner himself, of course. You will also see his second wife Cosima, and his father-in-law Franz Liszt. Only one non-family member is present; this is Hermann Levi, conductor of the Munich orchestra and eventually to become the first conductor of Parsifal. In fact, Levi admired Wagner, but you can see the various ways he is kept on the outside in this production. For Levi was an assimilated Jew. Let’s watch the opening:

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14. Kosky production, prelude start [3:50] 15. — still from the above

Kosky’s production is the stage equivalent of magic realism. To this group of real people in a real setting, he adds others popping out of the piano, all identical avatars of Richard Wagner himself. Eventually other characters will appear in period costume (each based on a famous painting of the time), but the setting will remain Wagner’s salon, and the real-life attitudes will continue, even when Wagner becomes the cobbler-poet Hans Sachs, and Levi is forced into the role of Sixtus Beckmesser. Look what happens when the offstage chorus begin to sing the church chorale. And look again as it transitions into the first scene between Walther and Eva, with Wagner watching from the side, as the stage director!

16. Kosky production, prelude end and Act I opening [7:50] 17. — still from the above

Everyone with us so far? We skip ahead to the ending of Act I. Walther has tried to sing his Mastersinger audition. The outraged Beckmesser has marked every perceived failure and refuses to hear any more. Sachs intervenes on Walther’s behalf. But the argument becomes personal on both sides, because (in Kosky’s interpretation) Hans Sachs is still in part Richard Wagner, who is still not able entirely to drop his attitude towards assimilated Jews, whom he disliked especially because he saw them as undermining the culture from within. The act ends in mayhem when the Apprentices rush in. But Kosky has yet another trick up his sleeve.

18. Kosky production, Act I ending [5:51] 19. — still from the above

We will see more of the Nuremberg courtroom in later acts. In fact, with the floor covered to look like a natural meadow, it becomes the shadowy surroundings for the evening and night scenes of Act II. Once more, we skip to the end. Beckmesser has come out to serenade Eva, accompanying himself on the lute to a ridiculously overelaborated melody that is presumably the epitome of the Old School approach of the Masters. Sachs, in revenge, accompanies him by marking his faults with his shoemaker’s hammer; after all, Beckmesser needs his shoes fixed by morning, doesn’t he? The scene develops into a full- fledged riot, finally calmed by the voice of the Night Watchman. But not before the crowd have put a caricature mask on Beckmesser’s head, copied from the hateful stereotype cartoons appearing in Der Stürmer and other Nazi propaganda. Sachs/Wagner watches from the corner, horrified at what he has unleashed—whick Kosky clearly identifies as virulent Antisemitism.

20. Kosky production, Act II ending [9:39] 21. — still from the above 22. Title slide 2 (Barrie Kosky)

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D. Towards a New Art

23. Beckmesser’s nightmare

When watching to this point, I had hoped that, having unleashed the Jewish stereotype on poor Beckmesser, Kosky would find some way of righting the balance, showing Sachs/Wagner making it up to him in some way, or apologizing before the Nuremberg court. But he doesn’t do that; indeed he includes a nightmare scene later in which Beckmesser is tormented by little Jewish-stereotype manikins. Historically, he cannot do that; Wagner’s attitudes did not change; indeed he wanted Hermann Levi to be baptized before conducting Parsifal. And as a Jew, an immigrant, and a gay man, Kosky cannot do that either; he knows what it is to be an outsider. Instead, he offers the only defense he can: that Wagner nonetheless filled this opera with great music.

So the debate turns to art itself. Wagner himself wrote, “Kinder, mach neues” (Children, make something new). And the grim Act III monologue in which Sachs reflects on the chaos of the preceding evening, ends with his realization that the only way to atone is to assist at the birth of something truly new. Here is the end of the aria: listen for the moment when Sachs/Wagner stops in horror of the nightmare riot he seems to have unleashed. And the answer comes in his music, some of the loveliest strains in the whole score.

24. Kosky production, Act III, ending of the Wahnmonolog [3:40] 25. — still from the above

And so he prepares to act as midwife. When Walther comes in to say that he has had a good night’s sleep and a wondrous dream, he urges him to set it to music, and take down the words as Walther dictates. Not only is it a lovely tune, it is a splendid example of the composition teacher at work.

26. Kosky production, Act III, Walther’s Dream Song [2:04] 27. — still from the above

I have to rush forward now. Beckmesser comes in, sees the song text and steals it. Sachs realizes what has happened, but makes a present of it to Beckmesser, telling him that he is welcome to sing it—if he can. And when the final scene opens, among much pageantry and dancing, Beckmesser does. Only he has imperfectly memorized the words, and tries to adapt them to the old-fashioned tune he had used the night before. The result is a fiasco. Beckmesser is laughed off the stage, and angrily exclaims that the song is actually by Sachs. Sachs replies that it only requires the true author to sing it properly, and calls Walther as his witness. [Calling Walther as a witness rather than as a contestant gets over the problem that, since he failed his audition to be a Master, he is technically ineligible.] But Walther does sing, and wins by acclamation. I shall play parts of both arias back to back. You may note, incidentally, that Walther has altered the song since first dictating it, making it less obviously structured, more organic.

28. Kosky production, Act III, Beckmesser’s song [3:22] 29. Kosky production, Act III, Walther’s Prize Song [5:55] 30. — still from the above

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E. Too New for Comfort?

31. Katharina Wagner production, opening of Act III

In Barrie Kosky’s production, the riot at the end of Act II serves as a spur for Hans Sachs to create something new. In the 2007 production by Katharina Wagner, however, it has the opposite effect. At the beginning of Act III, Sachs is tormented by the caricature effigies of German masters in the various arts—note Richard Wagner on the left. In response, Sachs becomes more conservative. For the first time in the opera, he puts on a pair of shoes, a suit, and a tie. The trauma has the opposite effect on Beckmesser (who in this production is not played Jewish at all). He throws away his suit and puts on a tee-shirt, painting it with the slogan “Beck in Town.” So his version of the Prize Song, before an ultra- conservative and very buttoned-up audience, is something entirely different, belonging to the Hippie culture of the sixties. [I need to say that, from the very beginning, Katharina has interpreted all the songs in terms of the visual arts.]

32. Katharina production, Act III, Beckmesser’s Song [6:09] 33. — still from the above

And when Walther is called by Sachs as a witness, he also wears a suit and tie. To illustrate his song, he brings on two actors in antique costume with a couple of pieces of stage scenery, creating a creaky little Eden out of props from a bad opera in the 19th century. Wagner might have said “Schafft neues,” but in this production anything new belongs with Beckmesser, not with Sachs and Walther.

34. Katharina production, Act III, Walther’s Prize Song [4:00] 35. — still from the above

F. “Holy German Art”

Walther accepts Eva and everything else that is offered. But he demurs at becoming a Master; he has suffered enough at their hands already. Sachs objects: give honor where honor’s due. In both the Katharina and Kosky productions, he takes to a podium in the middle of a darkened stage and launches into a grand (and at this stage rather tedious) aria on the sanctity of German Art. It is at this point that the difference between the two philosophies becomes most clear. Let’s watch the final three minutes of each show (Katharina then Kosky), and make up our own minds about their message.

36. Katharina production, Act III, end of Sachs’ aria and final chorus [4:01] 37. Kosky production, Act III, end of Sachs’ aria and final chorus [3:10] 38. Title slide 3 (Michael Volle as Sachs)

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