Melbourne Opera: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

Featuring an international Australian cast, the new Melbourne Opera production will be conducted by internationally acclaimed Wagner maestro Anthony Negus and directed by Suzanne Chaundy, the team who delivered Australia’s award-winning first regional production of Wagner’s masterpiece, The Ring Cycle in Bendigo in 2023.

Four fully-staged performances of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg will be given in an intimate theatrical setting specially designed to showcase the beautifully restored Royal Exhibition Building, creating a spectacular environment for Wagner’s epic work.

Wagner’s sublime and profound comedy “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” (The Mastersingers of Nuremberg) premiered in Munich in 1868. The opera is set in 16th-century Nuremberg and revolves around a guild of amateur poets and musicians called the Mastersingers. The story follows the cobbler Hans Sachs, a wise and respected Mastersinger, who becomes entangled in a complicated love affair involving a young knight named Walther von Stolzing and a beautiful young woman named Eva. Talented and innovative, Walther, an outsider, impulsively decides to compete in the Mastersingers’ song contest in order to win Eva’s hand. He is up against all sorts of musical pedantry, especially from rival contestant and Town Clerk, Sixtus Beckmesser. The visionary Sachs can see the worth and truth in Walther’s songs. Central to the work is Wagner’s belief that political parties come and go; leaders come and go but a community’s art provides the truest measure of its essential values. “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” is known for its rich and intricate music, which combines Wagner’s signature leitmotif technique with elements of German folk music and choral writing.

Meistersinger is central to understanding Wagner’s ideas on the role of music in society, on the renunciation of will and on the solace music can bring in a world full of delusion, folly, self-deception.

Conductor: Anthony Negus
Director: Suzanne Chaundy

Hans Sachs – Warwick Fyfe
Walther von Stolzing – James Egglestone
Sixtus Beckmesser – Christopher Hillier
Eva (Pogner’s daughter) – Lee Abrahmsen
David (Sachs’ apprentice) – Robert Macfarlane
Magdalena (Eva’s companion) – Deborah Humble

Sunday 16 February 2025, 3pm
Tuesday 18 February 2025, 5pm
Thursday 20 February 2025, 5pm
Saturday 22 February 2025, 3pm

Sung in German with English surtitles.

The performance runs approximately 4 hours 30 minutes, plus two intervals:

Interval between Acts 1 & 2, approx 40 minutes;  between Acts 2 & 3, approx 60 mnutes

Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne

TICKETS: $99 – $289