This was the prelude to a new era in the Festival: in 2009 Wolfgang Wagner gave tje direction to her daughters Katharina and Eva. Katharina, then in her early 30s, was starting a career as a director, in opera houses like Budapest, Bremen or Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
In its premiere, this staging was severely booed, and it continued the following year, as seen in the DVD. According to Mrs. Wagner, Die Meistersinger is a debate about arts. There is still criticism towards this vision, specially among orthodox wagnerians. The idea is fascinating, but un the first two acts there is a sensation of statism which has several boring moments.
After the overture, the curtain rises to show a classic, cold, oppresive hall of entrance of an University or Art School. The pupils are dressed in uniforms, with robot-like expressions and blonde hairs, whose esthetic reminds the children of the film "Village of the Damned". They prepare the hall, while from a piano emerges Walther von Stolzing dressed outlandishly, as an outsider, modern artist. Eva, Magdalene and David are dressed in uniforms. Even we see David making photocopies. The Mastersingers are dressed like serious professors, excepting Sachs who appears barefoot and untidy. In his transgression, Stolzing paints words and draws above classic paintings. Indeed his presentation to the Masters is done by showing his "works". For things like this one, this staging has been called "The Master painters of Nuremberg". The exam is really competition between Stolzing and Beckmesser on doing a puzzle with an old painting of the city.
Act 2 is setting tables and chairs, representing an old coffee shop, and a big hand sculpture behind. One of the best moments come at the end: Sachs interrupts Beckmesser with a typewriter. The quarrel is a confrontation of arts: there are seen people shaking Warhol's Campbell soup cans, the statues of the big musicians dancing togeher, and people showing cubist sculptures. Beckmesser paints in his T-Shirt "Beck in town" and leaving the stage in a mess.
Act 3 is set in the first scene in Sachs' house. He abandons his untidy aspect to dress a suit and gaining authority. In the Quintet, we can see the families formed by David and Magdalene and Stolzing and Eva, with an obvious class class difference. The "festwiese" is a dance of the great German artists and composers, becoming bawdy when the big-headed blonde walkiries appear to dance with them and we can see for example Mozart with an aroused penis-like stick between his legs. After this kitsch dance, the apparent stage team is thrown into a crematory and burned, with Sachs, David and the apprentices celebrating this deadly rite (a reference to Holocaust?)
The Song contest is a talent show. Beckmesser makes to emerge a man from a big amount of earth, and he throws things to the audience. Stolzing is a ballad singer, who wins the 10,000 marks price. He refuses the deer golden statuette delivered by Sachs. At the end, Sachs places the statuette in the middle of the stage, and the scene is dark, with only Sachs illuminated. Two golden sculptures in the style of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games emerge. Beckmesser, who has been watching, leaves totally scared. With this horrifying vision, an oppresive new era of Censorship, and lack of liberty is announced, and the curtain falls leaving no hope but horror.
Sebastian Weigle conducts the orchestra in slow tempi, convenient for the Preludes but lacking some vitality in other moments.
Franz Hawlata has the profile for Sachs with his towering appearance. His voice sounds as gutural as always, but in Act 3 he improves so much that he reaches a good level.
Michael Volle's voice is more suitable for Beckmesser than Sachs (which is singing nowadays in Bayreuth), with his light tone and his sense of theatre quite suitable for the main Antagonist.
Klaus Florian Vogt was starting his Bayreuth career, with a fresh and youthful tenor voice and even sex-appeal. He gave a good rendition of the Prize Song.
Michaela Kaune has a beautiful voice for Eva, but sometimes a bit unexpressive. Artur Korn is one of the big surprises in this recording, with his appealing dark bass voice, sung with good taste, quite a merit regarding he was 71 years at the moment.
Norbert Ernst is an excellent David, with a beautiful character tenor voice and good acting, and his angelical face helps to portrait the role. Carola Gruber is also an accomplished Magdalene, with an attractive partially dark mezzo-soprano voice.
The young Markus Eiche (now singing Wolfram in the 2019 Tannhäuser) is also suitable for Fritz Kothner, giving a good rendition. Friedemann Röhlig is amazing as usual, singing a powerful Nightwatchman.
This production was the prelude of a new era. Always reserved to the Wagners, Meistersinger was the last opera in recent Bayreuth history to be actualized. This opera was charged with a "German spirit" for nationalism and conservatism in Germany. This opera reflects on the different ways arts could take, and how dangerous is for them, as well as for liberty, the censorship and as the lack of free expression in arts. Germany and the Bayreuth Festival know it very well. The Katharina Wagner era took the Werkstatt spirit to a more radical level, reflecting un Bayreuth's stage all the ghosts of German recent history. The productions by Castorf, Kosky and Kratzer will give an account of the magnificent level of updating Wagner seen in Bayreuth nowadays, showing Wagner is still alive.
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