Music | Opera Review
Production’s Retirement Party
Schenk’s "I maestri cantori" at the Metropolitan Opera.
Otto Schenk’s lovingly traditional 1993 production of Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” returned on Tuesday night to the Metropolitan Opera. In many ways, the evening, which offered an excellent cast overall, and the magnificent Met Orchestra and Chorus, felt like a trip down memory lane.
If you are among those Wagner lovers who cherish this production, last presented in 2007, you have just six more chances to see it. Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, is replacing it with a fanciful production by Stefan Herheim introduced at the Salzburg Festival in 2013, now scheduled for the 2019-20 season.
When Mr. Schenk’s production had its premiere almost 22 years ago, James Levine was the conductor. He has essentially claimed the score ever since. For the rest of that initial run and during subsequent seasons, there were 30 additional performances. Mr. Levine conducted all but the last of them. He was back in the pit on Tuesday night. Not that long ago, it was hard to imagine that he would conduct it again. His countless admirers have cheered his return to performing after years of illnesses and injuries. That he conducts while sitting in his motorized wheelchair has hardly mattered.
Still, “Meistersinger” is a long show. Tuesday’s performance started at 6 and, with two lengthy intermissions, ended after midnight. Though Mr. Levine’s conducting since his return has often been inspired, there have been times when he seemed to lack some stamina and focus. So it was, at times, on this night.
His depth of insight, his feeling for the flow and shape of the score, and his attention to inner details were all impressive. But he has set a lofty standard for himself in this work. This performance lacked some of the miraculous transparency and definition that he achieved in earlier years. Though there was glowing sound and majesty in the orchestral prelude on Tuesday, there were also tentative entrances and lack of clarity. When the church congregation, assembled for a service in 16th-century Nuremberg, sang the sturdy chorale that opens the act, the tempo sounded sluggish. And during the long episode in which David, the apprentice to the shoemaker Hans Sachs, explains the rules of master singing to the new arrival in town, the knight Walther, again the pacing dragged and the orchestra under Mr. Levine was sometimes too heavy. In trying to be heard, it seemed, the appealing, sweet-voiced lyric tenor Paul Appleby, singing David, sometimes pushed his voice and sounded strained.
Still, there were splendid elements to the performance. The somber, pensive orchestral prelude to Act III was magnificent: Here was Wagner in his late-Beethoven-string-quartet mode. And Mr. Levine actually seemed to gain energy during the long final scene in the meadow, with the sprightly country dances and celebratory marches. The hymn of praise the townspeople sing to Sachs was glorious. Does any opera house have a better chorus?
The veteran bass-baritone James Morris has been an acclaimed Sachs at the Met from the time he first sang it in 2001. But no one expected him to be returning for this revival. The bass-baritone Johan Reuter, long scheduled to sing Sachs, announced in September that he would not be adding the demanding role to his repertory. Mr. Morris agreed to step in for five performances. (The superb baritone Michael Volle, who sang Sachs in that 2013 Salzburg production, will sing the other two.)
Mr. Morris, who turns 68 next month, is not what he used to be vocally during the many years when he was the Met’s go-to Wotan. His sound on Tuesday was sometimes leathery and thin, his phrasing occasional patchy.
Still, he brought enormous dramatic authority and richness of character to his affecting portrayal. Mr. Morris is Hans Sachs, one of Wagner’s finest creations, a modest shoemaker, a childless widower, a man revered in his town not just for his mastery of poetry and song, but also for his decency and insight into human relations. At the end, Mr. Morris received, rightly, the biggest ovation from the audience.
The powerful tenor Johan Botha has excelled in the demanding role of Walther, the restless knight who has come to Nuremberg, where he instantly falls for Eva, the lovely daughter of Pogner, the wealthy goldsmith. He did so again on this night. Mr. Botha has a very hefty physique. He does not cut the figure of the dashing young knight of Wagner’s imagination. Yet he sang with so much romantic allure and freshness, especially during the glorious “Morning Dream Song” (as Sachs names it), that Mr. Botha seemed the essence of a young man in love.
The soprano Annette Dasch’s bright, focused voice suits Eva beautifully. Some occasional tightness in sustained top notes was the only problem. She was beguiling in the role. As her father, Pogner, the bass Hans-Peter König was terrific, modulating his imposing Wagnerian sound to make the character seem paternal. In his Met debut, the German baritone Johannes Martin Kränzle sang Beckmesser, the town clerk, the comic foil in the story.
When Pogner offers his daughter’s hand as a prize in the song contest, Beckmesser is determined to win by any means necessary. With his robust voice and crisp diction, Mr. Kränzle played him as a fidgety, nervous, neurotic type, not a bad guy at his core. The German baritone Martin Gantner, also in a Met debut, brought a stentorian voice to the role of Kothner, the baker, another revered master singer. The mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill was a rich-voiced Magdalene, Eva’s attendant, who is in love with David.
It is always an event to have this great opera return to the Met.
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