Die Meistersinger Von Nürnberg: the music? Meisterful. The Staging? Cobblers! Even Bryn Terfel can't save this bizarre production

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Die Meistersinger Von Nürnberg 

Royal Opera House, London                                              Until March 31 

Performance 

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Production  

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Hans Sachs, the philosophising cobbler, is one of the most demanding of roles. But the masterful Bryn Ter­fel’s problems here aren’t with singing Sachs but with the serial misjudgments of Covent Garden’s director of opera, Kas­per Holten. 

So bizarre is this production, and the pivotal Act 2 such a mess, that maybe this is Kasper’s cunning plan to ensure that when he gets on his plane back to Copenhagen for the last time this summer, we won’t miss him.

Much money has been lavished/wasted on Kasper’s farewell, which is set in a gentlemen’s club, with everyone in white tie. This genial comedy about provincial folk is also saddled with a massive, slatted-wood, Oriental-style set.

The masterful Bryn Ter­fel’s problems here aren’t with singing Sachs but with the serial misjudgments of Covent Garden’s director of opera, Kas­per Holten

If Act 1 crushes the comedy by the sheer weight of this setting, Act 2 is a misbegotten mess, with Sachs still in white tie, cobbling away in the club dining room, singing his monologue to a couple of pot plants, while all Wagner’s charming references to a balmy night in Nuremberg are completely lost.

If you want a good reason why Kasper should never do his own show, this bit of unsupervised self-indulgence is it.

Sadly, this version replaces a splendid 1993 production by Graham Vick. This proves the old adage: ‘If it isn’t necessary to change, it’s necessary not to change.’ Vick’s show could of course be brought back, while this wooden set, neatly chopped, could keep Kas­per warm during the long Copenhagen winters.

Sad, because musically this is mainly good, with Sir Antonio Pappano on fine form in the pit, and Johannes Martin Kränzle a perfect foil for Terfel. Kränzle’s brilliantly observed Beckmesser – tall and spare, puffed up with self-love, and lurching from pratfall to pratfall – makes him a dead cert for ‘Philip Hammond: The Opera’.

Covent Garden should be embarrassed that this production is so manifestly ­inferior to recent Meister­singers at Welsh National Opera (revived by ENO) and Glyndebourne 

The masters, led by the ­veteran Stephen Milling as old Pogner, are generally good, and Allan Clayton is a charming and mellifluous David. Perhaps he would have been a better choice for the pivotal role of Walther than English National Opera stalwart Gwyn Hughes Jones, who is too old, snatches at his arias and looks awful kitted out as a greasy-haired biker. Why?

Both the lovers are very much the ENO of today, with Rachel Willis-Sorensen’s Eva an unnecessary American import, looking like a strapping cowgirl from Oklahoma!.

Covent Garden should be embarrassed that this production is so manifestly ­inferior to recent Meister­singers at Welsh National Opera (revived by ENO) and Glyndebourne.

Patience 

English Touring Opera, Hackney Touring Empire, London 

On tour until June 3 

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This production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience is a delight from beginning to end, and a must-see on English Touring Opera’s 22-venue spring tour. 

ETO’s general director James Conway wanted to present librettist W S Gilbert’s assault on the Victorian aesthetic movement as the creators intended, and that’s exactly what director Liam Steel delivers, his clever pastiche of Victorian staging being greatly assisted by Florence de Maré’s luxurious (by ETO’s standards) and evocative sets.

The poets Bunthorne and Grosvenor, rivals in monstrous egos as well as in love, are vividly portrayed by Bradley Travis and Ross Ramgobin, with both always staying just the right side of ruinously camp. 

Lauren Zolezzi is charming and fragrant as the milkmaid Patience, and a buxom group of aesthetic ladies disport themselves appropriately, as if freshly out of an Alma-Tadema painting.

This production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience is a delight from beginning to end, and a must-see on English Touring Opera’s 22-venue spring tour

Valerie Reid is particularly affecting as Lady Jane, another of those frustrated spinsters Gilbert loved to have a go at, though here, through patience as well as Patience, she finally gets her man. 

The military chaps, well led by Andrew Slater’s Colonel Calverley and Aled Hall’s Duke of Dunstable, strut their stuff as to the manner born.

It’s very well conducted and the orchestra are on good form. Actually, it’s hard to fault anything in an evening of joy all round.

Top-quality productions of G & S are a bit of a rarity these days, and performances of Patience, despite it being one of their strongest musically, even rarer. So catch this if you can.