CLaudia Roth, who can be seen in a historical photo from 1990 in front of Frankfurt’s Katharinenkirche behind a banner with the inscription “Never again Germany” as she protested “against the annexation of the GDR” and “against German nationalism”, has at the end of August 2022, now acting Minister of State for Culture and Media of the Federal Republic of Germany, told the German Press Agency in an interview that she saw a need for reform at the Richard Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, partly because “the audience on the Green Hill does not represent a reflection of our diverse, colorful society”.
When art and its audience have to justify themselves in the face of political claims of colorfulness and diversity, this can lead to conflicts with the rules and standards that art set or still sets for itself. And quite courageously, with courage and wit, the new production of Wagner’s music drama “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” at the Frankfurt Opera by Johannes Erath approaches the front lines of this debate.
It all starts with the video drawing of the praying hands by Albrecht Dürer (the contemporary of Hans Sachs in Nuremberg, the historical protagonist in Wagner’s drama) designed by Bibi Abel. This is accompanied by the prelude to the opera, which Sebastian Weigle finely models at the podium of the Frankfurt Opera and Museum Orchestra, lovingly designed in every detail, without pomp and showiness. The praying hands represent the attitude of nineteenth-century art religion: devotion to the work from which one hopes a revelation for one’s life.
Johannes Erath then shows the Meistersinger in the first act on adventurous high chairs like referees in tennis (Kaspar Glarner created the stage). When Hans Sachs then calls for the people to decide once a year what good music is, the opinion leaders are resentful: “Art is always threatened with fall and disgrace if it follows the favor of the people.”
But Erath does not take the side of the art judges who are knowledgeable about the profession. In fall and disgrace, it is above all they themselves who fall in the second act, because they all lust for the woman who is easy to get. Marlene Dietrich’s bare, shod legs lower themselves to the Sachs’ shoemaker’s song about the Eve of Paradise, which became iconic in the film “The Blue Angel”. Apprentices and masters alike are after Eva Pogner, who her father has offered as a trophy for the best master song. All the guys want to adjust the right shoe for her and quickly forget – like Professor Rath with Heinrich Mann – high art and good manners. They are morally discredited.
At the song competition on the Festwiese, the masters are only a fringe phenomenon. The stage is dominated by the icons of pop culture: a pack cuddle by the Beatles with Heino, Nana Mouskouri and Lady Gaga. The – provisional – final stage of the bourgeois religion of art is the casting show. Eva Pogner, who until now had actually wanted nothing to do with Walther von Stoltzing, succumbed to his appearance: “Nobody knows how to advertise like you do!” Art has become identical with advertising and has been completely absorbed in the pluralism of consumer democracy.
Erath does not forget the story of the characters in this great history of the secularization of art religion: Beckmesser is an uptight neurotic with an inferiority complex, which Michael Nagy turns into a top performance that is as agile as it is precise. Eva, sung by Magdalena Hinterdobler with explosive sensuality, wants Hans Sachs to be his husband and no other. And this Sachs, in the form of Nicholas Brownlee, is not significantly older than she is, but a youthful cavalier with tenoral brilliance over his baritone. Only Andreas Bauer Kanabas, with his comforting magnificent bass, is a paternal Veit Pogner as one would imagine him to be. AJ Glueckert sings Stoltzing with vocal charm, but remains a melancholic outsider as a character who is despised by everyone. Michael Porter sings and plays the apprentice David with great agility, whose catalog of master song tunes together with the orchestra, full of the finest nuances of color and meaningful caesuras, is a source of great musical joy. All those mentioned so far are role debutants, only Claudia Mahnke as the cunning Magdalene already has experience with the role. They all do their thing fantastically, just like the choir rehearsed by Tilman Michael.
Erath no longer asks to what extent Wagner’s play is anti-Semitic and Beckmesser a caricature of the Jews. Barrie Kosky brought it all to the stage in Bayreuth in 2017 in a stunning, frightening, but also well thought-out way. Erath wants to continue. The play still has a lot to tell us with its story about a sad, hopeless love, but also the argument about what good art is. At the end, Hans Sachs gives his notorious speech about “what is German and genuine” in art in front of the closed curtain. Beckmesser stands by him. In the colorful, diverse people behind them there is no longer room for either of them. Your views on art are not inclusive. As an aftermath, the word “Germania” lights up above the people until the first three letters go out. So if you delete “what is German and real” from the colorful diversity, what remains is “mania”. Madness, this daring production!
