We entered the Met at 6:00 P.M. and didn’t exit until 12:05 A.M.
Wagner demands a lot from his audience, but the reward is so much more than a great opera, it is to experience the sublime in a way that can change the trajectory of ones consciousness, and if you’re not into that, there is also a pillow fight.
At its most basic Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is a love letter to the human voice and the power of art to transcend the worst of human nature and endure beyond our foibles. It is also a meta post-modern treatise on what constitutes an authentic work of art and arts function in society. This is Wagner, he’s not going to condescend to the audience and just give us a straightforward love story.
The opera is based on a real cobbler named Hans Sachs whose birthday happens to cross over into the night we attend. He was born in 1494. Right from the start I have a warm spot in my heart for Hans because my great grandfather was also a a shoemaker.
Grandpop came over from Italy on a ship named the Giuseppi Verdi, that I imagine sailed on tenor waves and soprano winds to Ellis Island.
(I was destined to love opera from the start).
The window of my grandpa’s cobbler shop displayed a sculpture of a shoe that he chiseled himself from marble. I vividly remember walking past the crystalline smooth surface and then further into the odors of leather and wood. Like Hans my grandpop was also an artist in his free time and was recognized locally as a painter whose flowers adorned businesses and homes. I loved using the tools of different tips on scraps of leather. The shop was magic to me like living inside my grandmom’s favorite story, The Elves and the Shoemaker. It was a whole universe of tools and sanders; and glues, like toxic honeys.
This is the second time I’ve heard Lise Davidson sing and without hyperbole she has the biggest capacity I’ve ever heard in a voice. The first time hearing her sing in The Queen of Spades I knew I was hearing something very special. Tonights conductor hears this to saying, “Well, the voice is so sensational. You hear that kind of voice maybe once in a generation – I think even less, to be honest. The voice has a healthy gleam, and it sails effortlessly.” It’s frankly unlike anything I’ve heard before like her breath is borne from a cavern beneath the stage and pulled upward by winged muses.
It wasn’t only Lise who brought something special this performance, the conductor Pappano made me think of Yannick. Both so attentive to each note or maybe it’s their choice of tempo, but the entire night I couldn’t believe how sumptuous the sounds I heard were, like a Michelin star feast, I just kept shaking my head in disbelief (not as gregariously as the women in front of me playing air clarinet). Pappano sculpted Wagner’s score in a way that I don’t have the knowledge to break down technically, but as a member of the audience, I certainly felt it.
We can measure ourselves against the sublime.
I can’t remember the last time I went six hours without looking at my phone or thinking about all the things ‘I should be doing.’ If I ever needed the reminder that the goal of writing about these operas is about the journey and not the destination – six hours of Wagner left me feeling the importance of space within and without myself in this toddler society that is always crying for attention.
After tonight, mine is a consciousness momentarily, if not forever, changed.
So what’s Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg all about? Walther the Knight falls in love with Eva, and to win the approval of her father he sets out to compete in the competition like American idol to be the next master singer of the town even though he has no formal training. With the help of Eva’s surrogate father the current master singer Hans, Walther will challenge the masters guild and other courters to win the competition and prove himself to Eva and the town. The chorus that closes the opera would have blown through the doors of heaven if Lise hadn’t already knocked them down and I held my hand to my chest when Eva places the crown on Hans…
Notes on the production:
Conductor………………………………………………. Antonio Pappano
Hans Sachs…………………………………………… Michael Volle
Walther von Stolzing (knight)………….. Klaus Florian Vogt
Eva……………………………………………………………. Lise Davidsen
Sixtus Beckmesser…………………………….. Johannes Martin Kranzle
David (Sachs apprentice)………………….. Paul Appleby
A Nightwatchman……………………………….. Alexander Tsymbalyuk
Metropolitan Opera
11/4/21