Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

Your own daughter's hand as a prize in a singing competition - there could hardly be a stronger sign of belief in the systemic relevance of art. And indeed, goldsmith Veit Pogner, who offers his daughter Eva as a prize, is just one of many masters from Nuremberg for whom their art is more than just a nice-sounding sideline: no less than a community-building and society-improving force. In the Meistersinger, we encounter a group of utopians who are not interested in their origins or money, but in innovation and the future. Eva's own attitude to the whole thing is, as so often, of secondary importance. Wagner initially conceived Die Meistersinger as a comic opera, and so everything ends on a superficially joyful note. However, Elisabeth Stöppler and Cornelius Meister also use Die Meistersinger to tell a piece of German history and mentality between awakening and restoration and, in this German Midsummer Night's Dream (Elisabeth Stöppler), focus on the relationship between the generations and the question of why what was is perhaps also what will be.

Opera in three acts
Poem by the composer

by Richard Wagner