How to portray a group of people obsessed with music in a rather formalistic and rules driven way like the characters in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg?  The directorial team of Jossi Wieler, Sergio Morabits and Anna Viebrock, for their production at t6he Deutsche Oper Berlin in 2022, decided that the answer was to set it in a Conservatory.

It actually fits the plot pretty well.  Veit Pogner is directory of the Conservatory and whoever wins the singing competition will succeed him as well as marrying the boss’ daughter.  The other Meister are profs, as is Magdalena, who has a sort of “tutorial” relationship with David.  Hans Sachs is part time staff, a bit suspect because he writes popular songs and specialises in therapeutic massage.

Within that framework it plays out very much as originally written.  It has some directorial touches and a few cute sight gags.  It’s quite sexualised.  Walther and Eva make out a lot as, in a particularly awkward way, do David and Lena.  Hans Sachs and Eva have got something going too.  Hans Sachs is barefoot most of the time and when shoes do make an appearance they are almost always Crocs.  There’s a little nod to performance history in that the digital clock on the wall reads 19:33 as the final scene starts.  But really there’s nothing terribly outré.

What it does have is consistently excellent singing and acting.  It’s one of those shows where one senses that everybody is committed to make the production work.  For example, Heidi Stober, as Eva, really inhabits this version of Eva and sings very well too.  Johan Reuter is perfect as the somewhat shambling and rather “hands on” Sachs and, of course, he is a terrific singer.  Klaus Florian Vogt is an ardent Walther who really makes the most of his lyrical moments, especially in the last scene.  Philipp Jekal is very funny and, occasionally, a bit sinister as a very uptight Beckmesser and Albert Pesendorfer is rock solid and rather touching as Pogner.

Magdalena (Annika Schlicht) and David (Ya-Chung Huang) make an interesting pair.  He’s very young looking with an attractive and very different, lighter tenor than Vogt.  She’s about a head taller than he is and more mature looking and sounding.  It does add some extra spice to their relationship.  The minor characters are well done and there is a gang of young people acting as Conservatory students who provide eye candy and some very efficient stage handling.  Conductor John Fiore definitely goes for a full blooded and majestic kind of sound and the orchestra respond very well.  The DOB chorus is excellent.  All in all, musically and dramatically it’s top drawer.  The only thing that bugged me a little is that Sachs’ propaganda speech at the end sounds even more incongruous than usual in this dramatic context!

It’s not a complicated show to film.  Pretty much everything happens on a mostly well lit unit set and Götz Filenius does an effective job of capturing it.  There are no extras but there is a good interview with the directorial team in the booklet along with an essay, synopsis and track listing.

It’s the by now standard Blu-ray package of excellent 1080p picture and DTS-HD-MA and 24bit/48kHz stereo and it’s good technically helped by being split across two disks.  I am beginning to wonder though whether the time is coming when companies will up the ante on the soundtrack.  The best audio recordings; SACD or very high definition FLAC, definitely have the edge now, especially in dense music like Wagner.  Subtitle options are German, English, French, Japanese and Korean.

In it’s quite subtle way this production subverts the problem elements of Meistersinger more effectively than Katharina Wagner’s more Regie driven effort.  It’s also better musically.  The very conservative though might prefer David MacVicar’s Glyndebourne version.

Catalogue number: Naxos Blu-ray NBD0178-79V