Wagner Books
Wagner's Meistersinger: Performance, History, Representation (Ed. by Nicholas Vazsonyi)
Wagner's Meistersinger: Essays by Dietrich-Fischer-Dieskau, Peter Schneider, Harry Kupfer (interview), Lydia Goehr, Lutz Koepnik, David B. Dennis, Klaus van den Berg, Thomas S. Grey, Hans Rudolf Vaget, Eva Rieger
Wagner's Meistersinger: Performance, History, Representation is a valuable collection of essays and interviews, covering many interesting aspects of this great work.
Dietrich-Fischer-Dieskau sees it from a singer's perspective, writing about singing the Sachs role, and Bayreuth veteran Peter Schneider from the conductor's perspective ("On Conducting Die Meistersinger"). More interesting, though, especially for non-musicians, is the interview with German stage director Harry Kupfer. Kupfer, coming from the so called Regietheater school, have some very interesting ideas about the work (see below), emphasizing that there's no need to apologize for Die Meistersinger.
One of the interviews is pure fiction. The interview with Richard Wagner shows bad taste and is an editorial slip. The thoughts are those of the "interviewer" and should not have been placed in the mouth of Wagner.
Kupfer on the misuse of Meistersinger
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg has often been misused by nationalists, not to mention the Nazis. For this reason many people have been ambivalent or negative to the work. Sachs's words "Was deutsch und echt [...]" etc. in the final speech has led - or misled - many to reject Meistersinger. When asked to comment on this in the interesting interview, Harry Kupfer says:
The possibility for misuse and falsification is contained throughout Wagner's oeuvre. The contradictions of the nineteenth century, all of which Wagner synthesizes and takes to the extreme, also render his work open for misuse. It is well known that the final speech, complete with its national overemphasis, is essentially Cosima's fault. Originally, Wagner did not want to write it quite like that. Immediately after the Nazi period, these words caused a shiver to run up our spine. But today we can also perceive them differently. What has now become of "German and true" and of German culture in general, given the shadow of Americanization, makes the work explosive in an entirely new way, without us having to read it nationalistically. As we struggle today for a united Europe, it is constantly stressed that the particularity of each nation should not be lost. Whenever I pass by a McDonald's, whenever I turn on the TV in the evenings and immediately switch it off because of a program that follows an American model, whenever I hear the disregard of the German language (why do we never say "Kinder" anymore, but instead "kids"), Hans Sachs's words seem like music to my ears. We should not see them as being nationalistic, but rather as a wake-up call. One can also explain this in terms of the period when Die Meistersinger was conceived and written: an appeal to respect the best traditions that every nation possesses. In this case, one does not even need to overemphasize the word "deutsch" (German). Wagner never uses the word alone, but always supplements it with the term "echt" (true). This entails something positive, which goes to the heart of Die Meistersinger. The point here is the balance between good traditions and the development of new ones, while simultaneously rejecting bad traditions. Neither the anarchic-new, however inspired, nor the time-honoured but sterile tradition have much of a future. Hans Sachs mediates between the two, and the solution to the problem lies only in the dialectic tension between them. This way of looking at it rules out the possibility of any nationalistic or even fascistic interpretation. We must finally stop apologizing for Die Meistersinger. I will mount every barricade to defend this work against the non-culture (Unkultur) which confronts us today.
Wagner's Meistersinger: Performance, History, Representation p. 39-40 (bolding by me)
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg on DVD
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg on CD
"Wagner's Meistersinger:
Performance, History, Representation" on Amazon