Redemption Through Love!: An Irreverent Guide to Getting Wagnerian Opera Thrills Without Being a Nut

By Beth Elliott

There is a world of music - beautiful, thrilling, powerful and romantic music - that one composer wrote to express the theme of Redemption Through Love. Richard Wagner was hip to the power of myth long before Joseph Campbell, and even before Carl Jung himself. Wagner’s ten “sacred music dramas” move people so deeply they “are made to feel by his music that they are in touch with the depths of their own personality for the first time - a feeling of wholeness, yet unboundedness."

But then there’s the intimidating dark side to Wagner, the nasty wack job side. Everybody knows Hitler used his music as a soundtrack for the Third Reich. Few know that for all his anti-Semitic ravings, Wagner himself had Jewish backers and chose Jewish conductors for his operas. Or that Theodor Herzl got his inspiration for Zionism while attending a performance of Tannhäuser in Paris. Meanwhile, Wagner’s family and Europe’s unhinged fin de siècle anti-Semitic theorists are people one is dearly tempted to mock … but can’t, because no satire could come close to the actual story. Fortunately, Wagner’s grandsons stripped his festival house of scenery after the war and created an operatic “director as auteur” practice to make Wagner European, not just German, so his operas could belong to the world.

Redemption Through Love! Is an irreverent, entertaining and funny guide to Wagner that cuts through the insanity and opens the door to the magic. It takes the reader on a leisurely yet richly analytical tour of Wagner’s ten major operas, the legends on which they are based, and the spiritual and metaphysical themes that work with the music to make them inspiring, transformative experiences. There’s no need to fear the Wagner cult, because this book will show you how to get Wagnerian opera thrills without being a nut.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483514383

Book preview

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WAGNER 101

You now know the first thing you need to know about Wagner and his operas: the major theme of all his works was Redemption Through Love. That runs through all ten of the operas that are considered his mature works, the ones that make up the Wagner canon as performed at Bayreuth.

What's a Bayreuth? you might ask. Well, it's a town in Bavaria (pronounced BUY roit) where Wagner got King Ludwig II (the fairy tale castle builder) to build him a new kind of theater where the Ring Cycle and other Wagner operas could be performed in special festivals. Wagner thought his operas were meant to be performed like ancient Greek dramas: in festivals that were big religious rites. After all, he was creating the Art of the Future that would have amazing transformative power, as he'd be happy to tell you at great length and in great detail. And if he didn't tell you in person, you could read one of his many writings on the theory and practice of art.

Yes, Wagner was that full of himself. But he was more than just another egotistical artist: he was a world-class wack job who expected everyone to subsidize his artistic vision, and be grateful for the opportunity to do so. A lot more people did than you might imagine, especially given how he used his benefactors right and left. Many of them came back for more. Very early on, people got the hang of loving his art while holding their noses at Wagner the person. A lot of the heavy lifting's already been done as regards disassociating experiencing his music dramas, in all their inspirational, ecstatic glory, from hashing out all the Wagner controversies.

We are, however, going to take some peeks at his wack job history along the way, if only to keep a proper irreverent perspective on Wagner the person. There's another reason to get familiar with this composer: his wack job history is one heck of a story. Knowing about his drive to create the Art of the Future, and transform the world, helps you understand his art, and why over 10,000 books and articles had been written about him and his work just by the time of his death.

Besides, it will help us get our irreverent attitude on, and help you enjoy conversing with other non-cultist Wagnerian opera lovers if you get to any live performances. You can't summarize Wagner in a nutshell like you can, say, Bach—20 kids (they say he had no stops on his organ), saw God in the mathematics of counterpoint, used to be passé until people rediscovered how really amazing a lot of his music was (like the Brandenburg Concertos, especially the 3rd and 5th). Or Beethoven—crazy, socially awkward guy who went deaf but practically invented Romanticism single-handedly.

Wagner, on the other hand—such soap opera! The checks he wrote with his mouth—and how he actually managed to cash them with his music. We'll go into biographical asides along with the sample cosmic muffin philosophical and metaphysical speculations, because that's part of the fun.

Life and Career Basics:

Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig in 1813 and died in Venice in 1883. He was married twice. His first wife was an actress named Minna Planner, who wanted him to keep a steady job as a conductor. His second wife was Cosima Liszt von Bülow, daughter of the composer Franz Liszt, who survived him and was instrumental in establishing the Wagner cult. In between, he had what was at least a bout of emotional infidelity with Mathilde Wesendonk, a minor poet and the wife of a wealthy silk merchant who let Richard and Minna cottage surf on his estate outside Zurich while Richard composed Tristan und Isolde. We don't know whether he ever Wesen-bonked her (she did keep her husband informed of his attentions), but it split up his marriage.

Wagner was a pamphleteer ringleader of Dresden's 1849 May Revolution. With a warrant out for his arrest, he had to flee the city (and a good conductor's gig). He was pardoned in 1861. In 1864, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who both admired Wagner's music and had a crush on him, paid off his debts. Ludwig also funded construction of the Festspielhaus in the town of Bayreuth, which opened with the first Ring Cycle in 1876 and continues to open every summer for a festival of Wagner's operas. This kept Wagner busy milking Ludwig while keeping him at arm's length.

While Wagner struggled with commercial success during his lifetime, he became an influential European intellectual figure. Conducting overtures and selections from his operas (like the programs on CDs today) gained him quite a following, even if he couldn't impress the producers at the big opera houses. Meanwhile, he published such influential essays as The Art-Work of the Future (1849), in which he set forth his vision of Gesamtkunstwerk, all the arts coming together into a total artwork. His Opera and Drama (1851) described aesthetic concepts that were going into the Ring Cycle, concepts heavy on the philosopher Schopenhauer's idea of music as the one art that most significantly put one in touch with the real or ideal (noumenal) world as opposed to the phenomenal world. This leveraged the Hindu and Buddhist thought that was making its way into Europe and influencing a number of thinkers there.

All in all, Wagner was a larger-than-life figure during most of his lifetime, and his operas and theories on art were the subject of much discussion. He tells you so himself, in his 1870 autobiography Mein Leben (My Life), a nearly completely untrustworthy account.

The Early Operas:

There are three early Wagner operas that he eventually disavowed as not being consistent with his artistic vision. On the rare occasion they are performed today, it is as interesting historical pieces and not as true Wagnerian operas. There is a fourth, begun when he was a teenager and never finished, Die Hochzeit or The Wedding, which is mostly an answer to a trivia question.

Die Feen, or The Fairies, was the first to dip its toes in the theme of Redemption Through Love and was a conventional Weber-style opera of the day (early 19th century). Das Liebesverbot, or The Ban on Love, was an Italian opera-style adaptation of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure in which we have the rare spectacle of Wagner the German chauvinist praising Italian sensuality at the expense of German frigidity. Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen (Rienzi, The Last Tribune, a medieval Italian populist), has been called the best opera Meyerbeer ever wrote for being a grand opera (huge cast, chorus and dance numbers—opera as Cecil B. deMille would have done it) in the style of the times. Its overture is still recorded, but performances—which would take six hours—are extremely rare. Considering the libretto was an adaptation of a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, of It was a dark and stormy night fame, this is probably a good thing.

The Wagner Canon:

The first opera either we or Wagner would recognize as Wagnerian is Der Fliegende Holländer or The Flying Dutchman (1841). (I will use German and English interchangeably for clarity's sake.) It's based on the legend of a sea captain cursed to sail forever without rest. Every seven years he can berth and look for a woman who will be true to him till death, which would break the curse. In Wagner's version, a Norwegian sea captain named Daland encounters a ship (on a dark and stormy night) whose captain offers him treasure when he hears Daland has a marriageable daughter, Senta. Daland figures he has a good deal and agrees; the storm lets up and good winds blow them home.

Everyone thinks Senta's crazy because a picture on the wall of the legendary Flying Dutchman provokes her to compassion and a wish to save him. Her boyfriend, the huntsman Erik, is least pleased. He's just had a dream in which Daland returns home with a mysterious stranger who carries her off. He's bummed when Senta lights up as he tells her of the dream. She lights up even more when her father brings the stranger home. They, of course, fall in love, and Senta promises to be true to him till death.

Later that evening, Daland's crew invites the stranger's crew to join in the engagement party celebration. At first they don't answer, then they appear as the ghosts they are and frighten the Norwegians. Senta arrives, with Erik trailing her and berating her for breaking up with him. When the Dutchman hears this, he figures he's struck out again, sings the story of the curse (and his unsuccessful attempts to get himself killed) and prepares to set sail. Senta throws herself off a cliff into the ocean, thus keeping her promise to the Dutchman. The ghostly ship sinks, and the Flying Dutchman is finally dead—and free (Redemption Through Love!).

Tannhaüser (Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf der Wartburg, or Tannhäuser and the Singers' Contest on the Wartburg) (1845, with an 1861 major revision for the Paris Opera) is about a 13th century minnesinger, Heinrich Tannhäuser, torn between his desires for sacred and profane (sexual) love. He's having a great time in the Venusberg, the alternate universe abode of the Goddess of Love—the opera starts with a ballet of an orgy (at great length in the Paris version). But Tannhäuser misses nature and real life, and interrupts his powerful Hymn to Venus with pleas that she set him free. She doesn't want to, saying he'll regret it if he leaves. He finally calls upon Mary, the Mother of God, and the spell is broken.

His old buddies find him, as he listens gratefully to the songs of pilgrims heading for Rome. He tries to send his friends away, because he has sinned and is not worthy to return to the Song Hall. But they tell him that the saintly Elisabeth (the Madonna to Venus' whore), has been pining for him. That does it. He returns, and she opens the Hall for a song contest for the first time since he left. Heinrich's buddies sing ethereal songs of chaste love, which drives Heinrich wild till he sings his Hymn to Venus and declares sexual love to be the best. At this, all the men draw swords and are about to do him in for his sacrilege, but the broken-hearted Elisabeth bids them stop, and let him make a pilgrimage to Rome and ask the Pope for absolution. He agrees, and sets out.

Spring turns to summer and then fall, and among the returning pilgrims Elisabeth can't find Heinrich. She returns to the castle in despair. But Heinrich's buddy Wolfram finds him. Heinrich tries to shoo him away, telling him the story of how he slept on hard ground and walked over rocks to make his pilgrimage the most painful possible. When he got to Rome and saw the Pope, the Pope declared the sin of dallying in the Venusberg was unforgivable; his pilgrim's staff would sprout new leaves before he'd be forgiven. So Heinrich is trying to crawl off to the Venusberg with his tail between his legs, and Wolfram can hear Venus calling. Just then a funeral procession passes by; it's for Elisabeth, who has died of a broken heart, promising to pray for Heinrich in Heaven. He cries out, Holy Elisabeth, pray for me, and drops dead. His staff has now sprouted leaves, and the passing pilgrims rejoice that the sinner has found salvation (Redemption Through Love!).

Lohengrin (1848) was a favorite in the operatic repertoire through most of the 20th century. It takes place in 10th century Brabant (Belgium), where the German King Henry the Fowler has come to raise troops to expel the Huns (Hungarians) from German lands. The underage Duke Gottfried of Brabant, brother of the heroine, Elsa, is missing. His regent, Count Telramund, egged on by his wife, Ortrud, accuses Elsa of murdering Gottfried, and demands the dukedom. Elsa declares her innocence and her willingness to submit to God's judgment in a trial by ordeal; she has seen a knight in a dream who will come and be her champion.

A call for a champion goes forth, without answer. It's looking bad for Elsa, but she kneels to pray, and boat appears on the river, pulled by a swan and containing a knight in shining armor. Dismissing the swan, the knight offers to be Elsa's champion on condition she never ask who he is, where he has come from, or his lineage. She agrees. The knight squares off against Telramund and kicks his butt (Redemption Through Love!), but instead of finishing him off, tells him to go and do pennance. Then he asks Elsa to marry him.

Telramund and Ortrud are banished, but keep lurking about; she tells him she knows magic and will get Elsa to ask the forbidden questions. She starts by guilt-tripping her—won't she have pity, because her own life has turned to crap? Elsa makes the mistake of false compassion and fails to kick her to the curb.

Next morning, a herald announces that the King has offered the Dukedom to the knight, but he refuses and asks to be known only as the Protector of Brabant. Ortrud, having ditched last night's rags for some magnificent threads, accuses Elsa of black magic. Telramund pops out and claims he was defeated by fraud, because he didn't know his opponent's name. Elsa's shaken, but doesn't crack.

Elsa marries the knight (the hearty Act III overture gives way to the famous Bridal Chorus, known in English as Here Comes the Bride. Yeah, that one! And then on to the wedding knight, where Elsa does crack and ask the forbidden questions. At that, Telramund bursts out of hiding with a sword, and the knight kicks his butt again—for good, this time.

The crestfallen knight assembles everyone and explains, in front of the King, what happened, saying he killed Telramund in self-defense. He then announces he is Lohengrin, son of Parsifal, King of the Holy Grail, from the Grail Castle, Montsalvat. Grail knights are sent into the world to right wrongs, which is what he did here. But now, his cover blown, he must return, and the swan reappears with his boat.

Ortrud does the bwahahahaha! evil laugh, saying that if Elsa hadn't asked the forbidden questions, she'd have gotten her brother Gottfried back, because she, Ortrud, bewitched him. Lohengrin kneels to pray, and the swan turns into Gottfried. A dove appears to carry Lohengrin away in his boat, and Elsa falls dead of a broken heart.

And you're on your third or fourth tissue by now. Seriously. The denouement is beautiful, and will make you cry.

Tristan und Isolde (1859, but not performed till 1865). This is taken from an Arthurian legend and is set to music so chromatic that its influence reached as far as 20th century atonalism. The music is tense, tense, tense until, after four hours, it resolves into waves of major chords in the climactic Liebestod, or Love-Death. Female Wagner fans have been known to have orgasms in their opera house seats when this musical tension resolves, and Wagner was convinced the opera would be banned because of its then-strange music and erotic effect.

The opera opens on Tristan's ship, with Isolde and her handmaid Brangäne aboard. Tristan is transporting the Irish princess Isolde to Cornwall, where she is to be married to King Marke. She's royally p.o.'d. Not only is a sailor is singing a song about a wild Irish maid, but she and Tristan have history. After her old boyfriend Morold was killed, she found the mortally wounded Tristan in a boat and used her healing powers to nurse him back to health. Only then did she discover this Tantris (and yes, that's a reference to Tantra) was actually the Tristan who'd killed Morold. She'd picked up Tristan's sword to kill him, but instead of looking at the sword, he looked into her eyes, and she just lost it. So he had left, doing the usual: he never calls, he never writes … but comes back to take Isolde to marry his uncle. And now he won't even appear before her, saying he has to stay at the helm, even though she demands he drink a toast of atonement to her.

When his main man, Kurnewal, comes to tell Isolde Tristan will see her, she hands Brangäne one of the herbal potions her mother sent with her. It's poison. When Tristan comes below deck, he drinks it anyway, though he knows what he's risking. Isolde grabs the drink from him and finishes it herself. Thinking they're going to die, each declares boundless love for the other. Kurnewal breaks in to announce King Marke is coming aboard. That's when Brangäne says she got the potions mixed up, and what they drank was the love potion meant for Isolde and King Marke to make them mad for each other.

So there they are in Cornwall, preparing for the marriage feast. There are hunts at night, and when the sound of the hunting horns is far away, Isolde and Brangäne put out the fire in the brazier to signal Tristan the coast is clear. Brangäne warns that one of King Marke's knights, Melot, is getting suspicious, but Tristan and Isolde just go on about how in love they are with each other, how they can only see each other at night, and how they'll only be able to be together in death. They're oblivious to Brangäne's warnings that day is about to break, so they're in each other's arms when Melot leads Marke to them. Marke is heartbroken, because his adopted son has betrayed him and because he'd fallen for Isolde himself.

Tristan asks Isolde if she will follow him into the realm of night, and she agrees. Melot and Tristan fight, but Tristan drops his sword and lets Melot run him through.

In Act III, Kurnewal has taken Tristan home to his castle in Brittany. A shepherd plays a sad tune on his pipes and asks if Tristan is awake. Kurwenal replies that only Isolde's arrival can save him. The shepherd volunteers to keep watch and play a happier tune should he spot a ship. Tristan awakens and mourns being in the false realm of daylight, left with his ceaseless, unquenchable yearning. Kurnewal tells him Isolde is coming and Tristan rallies. He asks of her ship, but the shepherd plays the sad tune again and Tristan falls back into delirium, but not before noting that the sad song is the one he heard when his father, then his mother, died. But now the shepherd pipes the arrival of Isolde's ship. Kurwenal rushes to meet her, and Tristan tears away his bandages in his excitement. Isolde arrives at his side, and he dies with her name on his lips. The shepherd announces another ship—with King Marke, Melot and Brangäne. Kurwenal attacks Melot in anger to avenge Tristan, and they both die in the fight. King Marke explains that Brangäne told him about what happened with the potion, and now he must mourn over the body of his truest friend. Isolde trips out, singing joyfully about Tristan's beauty, his escape from the cruel day, and his glory as he blends into the World Breath (Redemption Through Love!).

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1867). The Master Singers of Nuremberg, as in the Masters of the Singers' Guild and usually called just Meistersinger, is the only comedy in the Wagner canon (because Das Liebesverbot doesn't really count). It is an amazing meditation on how inspiration and craft must work together for great art to be born, on how Nature inspires but the rules of composition help turn dreams into art. There actually was a Master Song tradition, with extremely picky rules, and in this opera Wagner is declaring that his new art, though misunderstood, is the art of the future. The main character was an actual Nuremberg Master Singer, the wise and beloved cobbler-Master Singer Hans Sachs (1494-1576), though he's fictionalized here. Mid-16th century Nuremberg was a free city of the Holy Roman Empire and a center of the Renaissance in Northern Europe.

After a magnificent overture, the action opens in church, where Walther von Stoltzing, a young Franconian knight, has tracked down Eva Pogner, daughter of the local goldsmith and Meistersinger Viet Pogner, to ask whether she is as yet betrothed. Walther is the last of his line, and Pogner is helping him cash out his inheritance so he can make his way in the world. Walther and Eva met just yesterday and have fallen in love at first sight. Eva's nurse, Magdalena, replies that Walther's question requires a complicated answer. To prove the Meistersingers' dedication to art, and that they're not just song nerds, Pogner will give Eva's hand and his estate to the Meistersinger who wins a song contest tomorrow, on Johannestag (St. John's Day, i.e., summer solstice). Eva may say no, but only Meistersingers are eligible to compete.

Magdalena asks her boyfriend, David, who is Hans Sachs' apprentice, to explain how to qualify as he and the other apprentices set up chairs and tables for the guild meeting. It takes much learning of complicated rules for songs, with which David still has trouble. It's obvious Walther is clueless; he's only been inspired by books of poems and the feelings that Spring evokes in his heart. Nonetheless, when the Masters arrive, Pogner is thrilled to recommend him for a tryout.

This arouses the suspicions of the fussy town clerk, Beckmesser, who hopes to win the contest and asks Pogner to put in a good word for him (because chicks aren't smart enough to make these decisions). Walther doesn't know this is bad news for him, because Beckmesser is the Marker: aspiring Masters have a performance judged according to the arcane rules; too many marks, and the singer has failed. Moreover, Sachs is setting Beckmesser on edge by asking whether the people should judge the winner of the Johannestag contest, and everyone else by speculating whether, once a year, the people should be able to voice their opinion on whether the rules are working to produce good art.

Though Walther improvises a lovely song, he's interrupted over and over by Beckmesser's chalk scratchings, more than enough to disqualify him. It takes Sachs to advocate his singing a third verse anyway, which he does over the Masters' arguing over just how bad his song was. Walther sings about an eagle flying above the Master Crows (Wagner's poke at the critics of his operatic innovations), and walks out as the Masters agree he failed.

That night, Sachs, whose house and shop are across the street from the Pogners, sits outside to work on Beckmesser's new Johannestag shoes. He still can't get over Walther's song and how he was moved by it; it broke all the Masters' rules, but seemed to be inspired by Spring and true to Spring's rules. He hustles David inside after Magdalena refused the apprentice the picnic basket she'd prepared for him, after hearing his bad news about Walther's tryout. Eva stops by to try and elicit more details about Walther's tryout, as well as to hint that a widower (like Sachs, who has been like a second father to Eva) could compete for her as well as a bachelor (like Beckmesser, who makes her go ewwww!!!). He sadly reports that, while he'd be happy to call Walther friend, the knight will not become a Master in any land; for he who was born a Master has among Masters the worst standing. The way she stomps off confirms for him that she's in love with Walther.

Magdalena intercepts Eva on her way home to tell her Beckmesser is coming to serenade her, and Eva asks Magdalena to put on her clothes and sit at the window in her stead. When Magdalena leaves, Walther appears. He tells Eva of his failure and asks her to elope with him. But Sachs overhears and subtly positions his lantern to light the street, and they duck into the shadows. Walther is ready to confront Sachs, as a representative Master, when Beckmesser arrives to sing his new wooing song.

Sachs breaks into a not-so-subtle cobbler's song about Eve needing shoes when expelled from the Garden of Eden as a sinner, so an angel had to come down to earth to make them and live a hard life but for the times another angel lifts him up to Paradise. Like the angel on Earth lifted to heaven, he, Hans Sachs, can be shoemaker and poet. Beckmesser rails at him for the interruption; Sachs reminds him he's only filling his own order for shoes. They agree that Sachs will play Marker as Beckmesser sings to Eva, and many are his faults.

Then David sees Beckmesser wooing Magdalena (thinking she's Eva) and attacks him. The ruckus sets off a riot—journeymen against apprentices, rival guilds against each other—till the Night Watchman comes along and everyone scatters. Walther sees his chance to run off with Eva, but Sachs pushes her into her house and drags him into his workshop.

The next morning, Johannestag morning (after a beautiful and pensive Third Act Overture with some of Wagner's superb writing for horns), Sachs is reading a book when David sneaks back in after having delivered Beckmesser's shoes. Seeing that David has flowers and ribbons, he asks whether there will be a wedding feast today, and David wishes aloud that he wishes it would be his and Magdalena's. He sings for Sachs his assigned song about John the Baptist—called Hans here on the banks of the Peignitz. Remembering that it's his master's name day, he gives Sachs the ribbons and flowers. Sachs gives them back, telling David to dress up to be his Herald today. David says he'd rather be his Best Man, and that Sachs could kick Beckmesser's butt in the contest. Sachs replies that he's already thought about that, and tells David to go wash and dress.

At this point, the comedy screeches to a halt with an aria by Sachs about madness! Madness everywhere! Even in his beloved Nuremburg, when he merely tried to stop an ill-considered elopement. But now it is Midsummer Day, and perhaps he can put madness to work for a positive end.

And with that, Walther emerges from a bedroom, saying he had a wonderfully beautiful dream. Sachs urges him to write it down. Walther says he might lose it if he does, but Sachs tells him memorializing dreams is what poets do (here the inspired theme of art being inspiration plus craft really starts to kick in). There could be a Master Song here! Walther is still sick of Masters, but Sachs tells him it's easy to create songs when Spring inspires you, but if you can go through winter and the cares of life and still create beautiful songs, then you're a Master! That's why we have the rules, and they do need refreshing from time to time. So why not use the Masters' craft to win the prize a Master offers? You just scared them with something new, that's all.

So, accepting that poetry can preserve dreams (they are friends, standing side-by-side), Walther begins to dictate his dream to Sachs, who writes it down and coaches him on form. This being opera, he sings his dream—and it's beautiful! Really, really beautiful! He sings two sections, and when he's had enough of words for a third, Sachs begs him to remember the melody, and when he sings it in a larger circle, to hold fast to his vision. It seems that Walther's servant found the clothes he packed for a wedding day, and found Sachs' house (surely in a dream!), so now it's time to dress for Johannestag.

Once they've entered their chambers to dress, Beckmesser sneaks into the workshop and looks around, sure that Sachs is up to some trickery. Sure enough, he finds Walther's poem while poking through a drawer, and when Sachs catches him red-handed, he makes Sachs swear not to perform the song or claim it as his own. Sachs does so, and gives Beckmesser the poem so he won't be a thief. A new poem by Sachs set to a melody of his own—because he's the best at melodies, he says—he'll certainly win! But Sachs tells him to study the song carefully, because it's different.

Beckmesser leaves and Eva arrives, complaining that her new shoes pinch—no, they're too loose; it's here—no, it's there. She's checking in on the knight, but also making one last pitch (with skirts raised above her ankle) for Sachs to compete for her hand. But Walther emerges in his finery, and inspired by the sight of Eva, comes up with a third stanza to his song. Sachs remarks to Eva, Now, that, child is a Master Song! And then he complains about constantly being on duty, whether as shoemaker or poet; if he's a widower, young girls play with his affections but only if there's a shortage of young men.

At this, Eva bursts into tears, and tells Sachs how much she loves him, how she would have stayed a child had he not awoken her to life and the workings of the spirit. If she had a choice today, she would choose him as her husband. But Sachs, who has indeed been tempted, says he knows a story about King Marke (from Tristan und Isolde) and would not want his fate, which would have been his had he not run into the right man for her just in time (Redemption Through Love!).

Magdalena arrives, David emerges, and Sachs declares there must be a proper baptism for a new Master Song. Since a baptism calls for witnesses, which apprentices cannot be, he elevates David to journeyman and names Walther's song The Blessed Morning Dream Interpretation Song. The quintet sing of its beauty, each wondering whether they're still in dream themselves. And now, it's off to the meadow for the Johannestag festival!

At the meadow, apprentices brag on their guilds as they march with their guild banners. The Meistersingers receive a hearty welcome, especially the beloved Sachs; he's greeted by a song the historical Hans Sachs wrote in praise of Martin Luther. Sachs says that's too much praise for him; praise belongs to Art—and to Viet Pogner, whose bequest as the prize of this year's song contest, and its art-affirming purpose, he announces. Pogner thanks him, admitting his heart is heavy (at the prospect of Eva having the choice of Beckmesser or nobody).

A sore and battered Beckmesser, furtively checking his Sachs-penned cheat sheet, proceeds with his own melody to make a hash of the song. Its words come out as a nonsense rhyme. When the onlookers can't help but laugh, he accuses Sachs of having set him up with a lousy