★★★★☆
“Hier gilt’s der Kunst,” or “what matters here is art,” says Eva in Wagner’s The Mastersingers of Nuremberg. It has become a Wagnerian credo, and when the Wagner festival at Bayreuth reopened after the Second World War the phrase was used as a refounding motto by the composer’s grandsons.
It has not been enough to deflect attention from Wagner’s problematic politics or those of his family, who still control the festival. Die Meistersinger sits at the crux of the problem, with its rousing calls to “honour your German masters” carrying with them — certainly at this address — echoes of an era when the masters being honoured abused culture rather than serving it.
The Australian director Barrie Kosky’s remarkable new production