Meistersinger at Glyndebourne (LPO/Jurowski et al.)

[Nick Armstrong]

Can’t see another thread about this: the free YouTube stream of this production was made available a couple of days ago on the Glyndebourne YT page.

Not all watched yet, but seems pretty terrific to me

[Alison]

Thanks Cali, well I’ve played the Prelude for starters, brilliantly done.

[Cockney Sparrow]

We were lucky enough to go in 2012 and the (IIRC) 2016 revival. Quite a logistical challenge for Glyndebourne, it was a triumphant achievement. Finlay was superb, IMO - although I can't claim other live performances to compare.

All round - production, singers and musical direction, they were memorable evenings.

[Nick Armstrong]

Thanks Cali, well I’ve played the Prelude for starters, brilliantly done.

Agreed: I’ve watched it a couple of times now

[bluestateprommer]

Managed to watch it all just before the pending deadline, in less than 12 hours. If anyone hasn't yet seen it, I humbly add my own recommendation, not that the word of an American counts much , especially as I took the somewhat wimpy route of watching one act per evening. It was an interesting move to cast Gerald Finley as a younger-than-usual Hans Sachs, which makes the undercurrent of affection and emotion between GF's HS and the Eva of Anna Gabler that much more touching. At the risk of a mild spoiler alert, the tears that Gabler's Eva fights back as she prepares to crown Sachs near the very end are almost painfully moving, when seen up-close.

It eventually hit me while watching the Glyndebourne video that I'd seen the Lyric Opera of Chicago staging of this production about 7+ years back, though none of the UK cast made it to Chicago, to be sure. Something else that did not hit me immediately about this production was a nagging feeling that I should have recognized something about the appearance of Beckmesser, in the particular wig and get-up. Then I found Tim Ashley's Grauniad review, after seeing the video:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/may/22/meistersinger-review-glyndebourne-wagner

....where he wrote this:

"Beckmesser (Johannes Martin Kränzle) looks like Giacomo Meyerbeer, the German-Jewish, Paris-based composer, whom Wagner detested."

Upon reading that, the penny started to drop for me. Ashley writes later:

'"Holy German art," as the staging reminds us, embraces Dürer, Bach, Goethe and Schiller. But during his final paean, Sachs also indicates that the Beckmessers and, by implication, the Meyerbeers of this world, also have their rightful place in any list of "masters". His gesture goes unheeded by the crowd, and a chill creeps into the final scenes of jubilation.'

It's perhaps curious to read that, because in terms only of the plot, Beckmesser is such a loser, even if he is also rather a jerk as a character, particularly for his pilfering of the song text in Act III. In that sense, in terms of the plot alone, Beckmesser gets what he deserves. But it becomes trickier to deal with those feelings in light of the understanding that Wagner was cruelly ridiculing Eduard Hanslick through this character (originally names "Hanslich" or "Hans Lich", in various program notes and such that I've sporadically read). In that different light, his humiliation in public comes off as very cruel, the salt in the general wound of no one in town seeming to like him anyway.

On the much lighter side, GF seems to have been the mastermind behind a very recent Zoom reunion of this Glyndebourne cast & crew for this production (though with JMK mentioning the words "stem cell transplantation" at one point):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMabVaRwitA

[BBMmk2]

Thanks for the heads up!