The Best of Opera, Vol. 4

[1] Wagner's opera The Mastersingers of Nuremberg, first staged in Munich in 1868, is set in sixteenth-century Nuremberg, where a song contest is to be held, according to the traditional rules of the guilds. On this occasion the goldsmith Pogner is offering the winner the hand of his daughter Eva in marriage. Matters are complicated by the intrusion of the young knight Walther, who falls in love with Eva and enters the contest, to the disgust of the town-clerk Beckmesser, who has his own ambitions. The Overture weaves together various leading motifs associated with characters, ideas and events in the work, starting with the Mastersingers motif, followed by that associated with Walther's love. There are motifs for the Guilds, for youthful fervour, love, passion and, in an accelerated version of the Mastersingers motif, music for the apprentices, all reaching a climax as they appear together.

[2] Giuseppe Verdi ow