THE MASTER SINGERS FROM NUREMBERG • COPENHAGEN
★★★★★★
Photo: Miklos Szabo
REVIEW THE MASTER SINGERS OF NUREMBERG: OPERA SUPERTANKER WITH SIX-STAR CARGO
One of the opera repertoire’s supertankers has docked at Holmen with a six-star cargo of Wagner’s sumptuous music and a cast of singers of extremely impressive quality. Monumental staging, thrilling mass choreography and dazzling orchestral playing make this sumptuous five-and-a-half-hour journey into Wagner’s full-bodied musical universe an opera experience of a lifetime.
Photo: Miklos Szabo
The show’s brightest stars are the formidably well-sung Danish star baritone Johan Reuter in the key role of the wise cobbler Hans Sachs, in good company with another Danish star, the heroic tenor Magnus Vigilius, in the role of the young knight Walther, who challenges convention and turns the city upside down. He might even win the girl in the end.
The opera is atypical Wagner in several ways. Firstly, it is not based on mythological material – secondly, it is a comedy that uses humour to tell the story of how the rigid rules of the Master Singers, personified and ridiculed by the pedant Beckmesser, must give way to new, youthful ideas. A cultural-philosophical drama of ideas, in which a love story with both winners and losers is interwoven.
Photo: Miklos Szabo
Musically, it’s a Wagner on top form, with a wild potpourri of overtures and a magical, effervescent ending to the second act that seem to surpass itself in orchestral and choral composition – a breathtaking and downright fabulous opera experience.
The prelude to the two-hour long third act is some of the most beautiful of Wagner’s music, and the entire finale has the audience gasping with excitement.
Photo: Miklos Szabo
French director Laurent Pelly, who recently enriched the opera with Eugene Onegin, has staged the production, which has been produced in collaboration with the Madrid and Brno operas.
Five and a half hours of Wagner is quite a mouthful, but in this case, it is also a heavenly mouthful of operatic art at the highest level.
Photo: Miklos Szabo
The stage design is a mixture of grand gestures and creative courage – and in several key scenes it is mostly made up of its massive cast in skillfully controlled choreographies.
Six stars for The Master Singers of Nuremberg, which is sure to delight already devout Wagnerians, but also deserves a wider audience with a sense of musical bravura.
