Greetings for "Meistersinger" – Highly Political Bayreuth Festival

"Highly Political Nuremberg Singers": Wagner's alter ego Hans Sachs (Michael Volle) and Eva (Emily Magee). (Image: KEYSTONE / APA / Bayreuth Festival / ENRICO NAWRATH)

(nda / dpa)

Trampling, bravo shouting, applause, some spectators can not stay on their seats. However, there are also calls from Buh for the director of Komische Oper Berlin, who will probably be the first Jewish director in the history of the festival.

Kosky's personality is already a political issue, but also in terms of content. brings, highly political. It focuses on Wagner's much discussed anti-Semitism and shows a plea against xenophobia and tolerance.

It all starts so cuddly: The first elevator plays where "Wahn found peace" of Wagner – in the house Wahnfried in Bayreuth. In the case of Kosky, Richard Wagner and his alter ego Hans Sachs (Michael Volle) are identical to the "master singers".

Wagner celebrates his quirks, his love of dogs for Molly and Marken, and his weakness for scented perfumes to get used to. A private performance also includes the visit of Jewish band leader Hermann Levi, who mocks Wagner when he does not kneel during Mass and makes no sign of the cross

that Kosky's staging does not concern love the little human quirks of the master should go, but about his very big flaw becomes more clear in the second lift.

Wahnfried disappears, instead the walls of the 600 Nuremberg courtroom, famous place of major war crimes trials after the end of the Second World War, rise. There, the Jew Levi at Beckmesser (Johannes Martin Kränzle), the juror in the singer's competition. For Kosky, he is the central figure of Wagner's only comic opera

When Beckmesser, after innumerable mockery of Sachs, is finally attacked and beaten by a crowd, Kosky gives him the mask of a caricature Jewish that looks like the story of Nazi hate. Striker "sprung. Finally, a huge caricature with crooked nose unfolds at his side

Different Nuremberg

"What is Nuremberg?" It was his central consideration, writes Kosky in the program. It has changed its production since its inception last year and, for example, has removed a prairie as a scene from the second act.

Nuremberg was for Wagner a paradise, a utopia that he had found on a small scale at Villa Wahnfried. For many others, Nuremberg is the city of National Socialist rallies of the Nazi Party.

Beckmesser is eventually driven out of the city by people because he was guilty of German cultural heritage and did not sing well enough is one of the most important scenes of Kosky's staging. He then sings Walther von Stolzing (Klaus Florian Vogt always bell and unassailable), a young Christian on free foot – and is celebrated by the people.

Remarkable singer

Philippe Jordan at the podium gives this interpretation and the singers much place and applaud for his rather sober direction. Vogt and Kränzle are rightly celebrated for their performance, Emily Magge as Eva (and Cosima) rightly a little less.

Jubilation for Volle as Wagner / Sachs is infinitely great, far surpassing the already remarkable singers ensemble with its presence and vocal power.

Uncle Wolf's Favorite Composer

A Jewish director stages the favorite composer of Adolf Hitler Wagner on Green Hill – where the dictator was once so welcome that he was born. Called Uncle Wolf. One might strikingly say that Kosky has banished anti-Semitism in Wagner's work – or in a constant and commanded manner.

After all, anti – Semitism and xenophobia in Germany today make one of the newspapers in the impossibility of regularity for a long time. political current.

In Kosky's production, a pendulum hangs on the wall of Nuremberg's audience hall. She turns fearfully quickly backwards. When it stops at last, it is not less than a quarter

The critical "Parsifal" production of Uwe Eric Laufenberg also joined in the same direction: a plea for tolerance instead of the hate and exclusion. Yuval Sharon, whose parents come from Israel, had told a non-political fairy tale with the opening of "Lohengrin" this year.

And Katharina Wagner 's dark and desperate "Tristan", for which she was booed on Friday night, was a story of love. neither more nor less Great love and great politics are the two pillars of the festival this year.