Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (pronounced [diː ˈmaɪstɐˌzɪŋɐ fɔn ˈnʏʁnbɛːɐk]), also known as WWV 96, is a three-act music drama by Richard Wagner. It holds the record as the longest opera regularly staged, clocking in at nearly four and a half hours—not including its two intermissions—and is almost never cut. Its premiere took place on 21 June 1868 at the National Theater in Munich (now home to the Bavarian State Opera), with Hans von Bülow conducting.

The action unfolds in Nuremberg during the mid-16th century, when the city was a free imperial city and a key hub of the Northern European Renaissance. Central to the plot is the guild of Meistersinger, or Master Singers—a club of amateur poets and musicians who were mostly master craftsmen. These singers followed a strict, craft-like system of rules for composing and performing songs. The opera’s atmosphere is heavily shaped by its portrayal of Nuremberg at that time and the traditions of the master-singer guild. One key character, the cobbler-poet Hans Sachs, is based on the real historical figure Hans Sachs (1494–1576), the most renowned of the master-singers.

This opera stands apart in Wagner’s body of work. It is the only comedy among his mature operas (he had rejected his earlier *Das Liebesverbot*), and it is also unusual for being set in a specific, historically documented time and place rather than in myth or legend. It is the only mature Wagner opera with a completely original story, and it contains no supernatural or magical elements. Furthermore, it embraces many operatic conventions that Wagner had criticized in his theoretical writings: rhymed verse, arias, choruses, a quintet, and even a ballet. The autograph manuscript is kept at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum.

**Composition history**

In his autobiography *Mein Leben*, Wagner described the opera’s origins. While taking the waters at Marienbad in 1845, he read Georg Gottfried Gervinus’ *Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung*, which included chapters on master song and on Hans Sachs. Wagner wrote: “I had formed a particularly vivid picture of Hans Sachs and the mastersingers of Nuremberg. I was especially intrigued by the institution of the Marker and his function in rating master-songs… I conceived during a walk a comic scene in which the popular artisan-poet, by hammering upon his cobbler's last, gives the Marker, who is obliged by circumstances to sing in his presence, his come-uppance for previous pedantic misdeeds during official singing contests, by inflicting upon him a lesson of his own.”

Gervinus’ book also mentioned a poem by the real Hans Sachs about Protestant reformer Martin Luther, titled “Die Wittenbergisch Nachtigall.” Wagner later used its opening lines—addressing the Reformation—in Act III, Scene 5, when the crowd acclaims Sachs: “Wacht auf, es nahet gen den Tag; ich hör' singen im grünen Hag ein wonnigliche Nachtigall.” Wagner also added a scene drawn from his own life: a case of mistaken identity that sparked a near-riot, which became the basis for Act II’s finale. He described the incident: “Out of this situation evolved an uproar, which through the shouting and clamour and an inexplicable growth in the number of participants in the struggle soon assumed a truly demoniacal character. It looked to me as if the whole town would break out into a riot… Then suddenly I heard a heavy thump, and as if by magic the whole crowd dispersed in every direction… One of the regular patrons had felled one of the noisiest rioters… And it was the effect of this which had scattered everybody so suddenly.”

The first draft of the story was dated “Marienbad 16 July 1845.” In his 1851 essay *Eine Mitteilung an meine Freunde*, Wagner said that *Meistersinger* was intended as a comic opera to follow a tragic one—*Tannhäuser*—just as the Athenians followed a tragedy with a comic satyr play; the link was that both operas feature song contests.

**Influence of Schopenhauer**

In 1854, Wagner first read Schopenhauer and was struck by his theories on aesthetics. Schopenhauer argued that art offers an escape from life’s suffering, and that music is the highest art because it is abstract and does not represent the world—allowing it to communicate emotion without words. Before this, in his essay *Oper und Drama* (1850–51), Wagner had criticized standard operatic elements like arias, choruses, duets, trios, and recitatives. After absorbing Schopenhauer’s ideas about music’s role, he re-evaluated his approach and included many of these elements in *Die Meistersinger*.

Though a comedy, the opera also explores Wagner’s ideas about music’s place in society, the renunciation of the *Wille* (Will), and the solace music can bring in a world full of *Wahn* (delusion, folly, self-deception). *Wahn* causes the riot in Act II—a chain of events triggered by mistaken identity, which can be seen as a form of self-delusion. Commentators have noted that in his famous Act III monologue “Wahn, Wahn, überall Wahn,” Sachs paraphrases Schopenhauer’s description of how *Wahn* drives people to self-destructive behavior. After finishing *Tristan und Isolde*, Wagner returned to *Die Meistersinger* in 1861 with a philosophical outlook quite different from the one he held when he first conceived it.