Restricted View: The WNO ‘Meistersinger’ lacks a crucial dimension, finds Barry Millington

The skill with which Wagner weaves together his dual themes of art and love – old artistic forms giving way to new, while retaining the best of tradition, just as Sachs’s avuncular love for Eva gives way to the spontaneous youthful passion of Walther – is such that new interpretative approaches to Die Meistersinger are never short of nourishment. There’s also a political dimension to the work, however, evident in the nationalistic rhetoric of Sachs’ notorious ‘Hab’ Acht!’, for example, and in the victimisation of the outsider, Beckmesser. Coupled with the troubled legacy of the opera and the perennial issue of the relationship of art and ideology in Wagner’s work, this is a dimension one does not expect a sentient director to shirk. Richard Jones’s new production for WNO surprisingly does sideline the politics, focusing exclusively on matters of art and love.