This 2 DVD set a co-production with the Opera National de Paris, Teatro alla Scala and the Metropolitan Opera is a dazzling, life-enhancing experience, IMV, and may be the most major accomplishment since Peter Brook's RSC production of King Lear in 1962. Yes,perhaps a bit fanciful but every sequence was carefully analysed and stripped to the bone for a sense of emotional truth. I was always aware that a new look at operatic performance was long overdue. We were accustomed to stand and deliver performances totally lacking in plasticity or a sense of ensemble. Changes were certainly underway in the theatre since my years as a thesp when Brook, Joan Littlewood and the Royal Court Theatre were already testing the waters for a change of direction. I've literally been stunned by Stefan Herheim's production as I absorbed the attention to detail over two full viewings, although, initially, I was half-witted in overlooking the 15 mins Making of...documentary and sampling Herheim's charm and steeliness in his direction.
It seems that after Wagner had composed Tristan, he returned to Die Meistersinger and the respectability of the great early romantic masters; Biedermeir, ETA Hoffmann, Wackenroder, and the Brothers Grimm and in the years between 1815-1848, an incredibly turbulent time, Wagner grew up in an age of contradictions - a time when Mendelssohn remembered Bach who had been forgotten for almost a century - Meyerbeer and Spontini were the greatest opera composers at that time. The character of Hans Sachs contains many biographical pointers to Wagner, showing him not as a German renaissance artist, but as a universal thinker developing the ideas of a poet like Goethe of the great Enlightenment thinkers, the German philosophers. Apparently,Wagner spent 35 years working on Die Meistersinger - the work set in a real place at a real time, everything is described in detail; its supposed to be the German renaissance but Wagner uses this Nuremberg of Hans Sachs and Durer to symbolise a new Germany that he hopes still lies in the future with a new culture and a new political order which is actually no longer political but based on artistic ideals and humanitarian principles and he tries to depict this in a work of art, a comedy! Sachs multilayered and magnificently portrayed by Michael Volle as he effortlessly dominates the narrative with his stage presence. In their rehearsal discussions, Stefan Herheim suggests that Volle's inner tempo may be too light, "I'm looking for something weightier, solitary, a tragic potential, the beginning of Act 3 in which he has the most to sing - the prelude before the curtain rises on his workshop and you get the incredible 'Wahn' monologue and Sachs recalls everything that happened on the previous night and in the riot scene, he thinks wistfully of Eva and his subsequent renunciation of her"; I was moved to tears at this point by his burning anger and froze when he savagely cuffed David as he ended his apprenticeship, an end to another relationship as he becomes a journeyman. Don't think I've ever seen this scene so poignant before. But, good man, he was careful to remain in full control of his feelings for Sachs. Thrilling to see. However, I'm a bit nervous of losing this copy so will take a tea break before returning to the exquisite design throughout. To be continued...
It seems that after Wagner had composed Tristan, he returned to Die Meistersinger and the respectability of the great early romantic masters; Biedermeir, ETA Hoffmann, Wackenroder, and the Brothers Grimm and in the years between 1815-1848, an incredibly turbulent time, Wagner grew up in an age of contradictions - a time when Mendelssohn remembered Bach who had been forgotten for almost a century - Meyerbeer and Spontini were the greatest opera composers at that time. The character of Hans Sachs contains many biographical pointers to Wagner, showing him not as a German renaissance artist, but as a universal thinker developing the ideas of a poet like Goethe of the great Enlightenment thinkers, the German philosophers. Apparently,Wagner spent 35 years working on Die Meistersinger - the work set in a real place at a real time, everything is described in detail; its supposed to be the German renaissance but Wagner uses this Nuremberg of Hans Sachs and Durer to symbolise a new Germany that he hopes still lies in the future with a new culture and a new political order which is actually no longer political but based on artistic ideals and humanitarian principles and he tries to depict this in a work of art, a comedy! Sachs multilayered and magnificently portrayed by Michael Volle as he effortlessly dominates the narrative with his stage presence. In their rehearsal discussions, Stefan Herheim suggests that Volle's inner tempo may be too light, "I'm looking for something weightier, solitary, a tragic potential, the beginning of Act 3 in which he has the most to sing - the prelude before the curtain rises on his workshop and you get the incredible 'Wahn' monologue and Sachs recalls everything that happened on the previous night and in the riot scene, he thinks wistfully of Eva and his subsequent renunciation of her"; I was moved to tears at this point by his burning anger and froze when he savagely cuffed David as he ended his apprenticeship, an end to another relationship as he becomes a journeyman. Don't think I've ever seen this scene so poignant before. But, good man, he was careful to remain in full control of his feelings for Sachs. Thrilling to see. However, I'm a bit nervous of losing this copy so will take a tea break before returning to the exquisite design throughout. To be continued...
Nevertheless, such a classy production.
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