I just finished watching my tape of the Met Die Meistersinger telecast; a telecast I would have missed entirely had it not been for a chance hearing on WQXR (The New York Times's classical music FM station) of a single promo for its airing. WNET, New York's PBS outlet, aired nary a word of promo for the telecast, or none that I saw, and I watch that channel in prime time almost exclusively. The Met production — a traditional staging of the work (the Met is today perhaps the only major opera house in the world where one can still see Wagner's music-dramas realized as Wagner envisaged them) — was marginally enjoyable, generally speaking, but there were a number of problems, that notwithstanding.
First, someone needs to remind tenor Ben Heppner (the Walther) that he's playing in a Wagner music-drama, not a Verdi soap opera, and can't go about gesticulating with those all-situation-all-purpose Italian opera cartoon gestures. They might pass as OK, even be expected, in Italian opera, but they merely make one look ridiculous in a Wagner music-drama. And the man really has to do something about his weight if he wants to play the role of the young hero, Walther von Stolzing. In this production, Heppner makes von Stolzing look older than both Sachs and Pogner.
Heppner was in fairly good voice for this performance, and that voice has baritonal-ripened a wee bit since I last heard him which makes it more appropriate for this role. What was not so good was that he had to dub in after the fact almost all his upper-register notes, and the dub job was quite apparent.
Thomas Allen did a superb job as the weaselly Beckmesser, and Renee Pape, a first-rate if not exceptional job as Pogner. Ditto James Morris as Sachs. Karita Mattila as Eva was beyond mere praise on all counts. I'm beginning to think this woman must be one of the greatest gifts to opera of the last half century: an intelligent, gifted actor, a first-rate singer, and beautiful into the bargain. It doesn't get much better than that.
Unexpectedly, conductor James Levine had some serious pacing problems with his reading, in the first act particularly, and the whole reading was rather a bit too plodding, I think. Surprising, actually, as Levine, always a meticulous Wagner conductor, has, in the last few years, grown into a genuinely tempi-and-pacing-fluid Wagner interpreter; an ideal too rarely encountered today where the absolutely wrongheaded — musically, dramatically, and stylistically — Boulez-inspired, light-touch-transparent-and-precise reading of Wagner's scores seems to be the in-fashion norm everywhere.
As for the sets, they were of a naturalistic bent, and generally pretty nifty, although I would have preferred a slightly "abstract-crooked" look for Act II Nuremberg rather than the straight up-and-down look of this production. Ditto the too-crowded and space-deficient Act III meadow set. That scene needs to have room to "breathe" visually, and give the impression of a vast open space with the town of Nuremberg suggested in the deep background. This representation was far too constricted and claustrophobic.
And the Met needs desperately to get a new stage director. Stage movements in this production, both individual and en masse, were truly clunky and amateurish throughout. I do think director Otto Schenk really has to be asked to pack it in, and call it a day. In this production, for instance, the brilliant second-act riot finale turned out deadly wooden, and the all-white costumes (meant to represent nightshirts) of the crowd of Nurembergers didn't help, either. Made that crowd end up looking like nothing so much as a pack of Casper The Ghosts, and that great, vibrant concluding ruckus, a boring, meaning-empty mess.
I'm glad I taped this telecast, however, as it's a document of sorts. But I sure as hell would never lay out $39.99 (PBS price), or $29.99 (Amazon price) for the commercially available DVD. I've better places to spend my always-in-too-short-supply funds.
It's The Music, Stupid!
Peggy
