Wagner's one comic opera was born under a lucky star. Most of his operas
had to wait many years for production, but the kindly care of Ludwig of
Bavaria secured the performance of 'Die Meistersinger' a few months
after the last note had been written. Unlike many of his other
masterpieces, too, 'Die Meistersinger' (1868) was a success from the
first. There were critics, it is true, who thought the opera 'a
monstrous caterwauling,' but it had not to wait long for general
appreciation, and performances in Berlin, Vienna, and Dresden soon
followed the initial one at Munich.
The scene of 'Die Meistersinger' is laid in sixteenth-century Nuremberg.
Walther von Stolzing, a young Franconian knight, loves Eva, the daughter
of Pogner the goldsmith; but Pogner has made up his mind that Eva shall
marry none but a Mastersinger, that is to say, a member of the guild
devoted to the cultivation of music and poetry, for which the town was
famous. Eva, on the contrary, is determined to marry no one but Walther,
and tells him so in a stolen interview after service in St Catherine's
Church. It remains therefore for Walther to qualify as a master, and
David, the apprentice of Hans Sachs the cobbler, the most popular man in
Nuremberg, is bidden by his sweetheart Magdalena, Eva's servant, to
instruct the young knight in the hundred and one rules which beset the
singer's art.
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