OPERA REVIEW : Musical Splendor in ‘Die Meistersinger’

On the surface, it looked like just another “Meistersinger,” Thursday night at the War Memorial Opera House.

The principals represented a virtual duplication of the cast lined up for the Metropolitan Opera last season.

The stage direction was credited to Lotfi Mansouri, a solid conservative who seldom rocks the boat of tradition.

Roberto Oswald’s rather skimpy sets--mock-realistic decorations offset by primitive backdrops pretending to invoke Durer woodcuts--seemed old-fashioned when they were new, and that was in 1971. Walter Mahoney’s generic costumes suggested a raid on a dusty warehouse.

But just another “Meistersinger” ? That must be an oxymoron.

Wagner’s massive quasi-comedy lasts five hours, even with the pardonable cuts imposed here. It requires a large cast of resourceful singing-actors who happen to be equipped with leather lungs, plus a generous orchestra, a huge chorus and a picturesque crew of dancing, tumbling and gesticulating extras.

According to Koraljka Lockhart, the resident virtuosa in charge of trusty trivia, there were 171 bodies on the stage and 87 players on orchestral duty. Old Nurnberg was a crowded, busy place.

No wonder the box office upped the ticket prices.

As the operatic fates would have it, San Francisco’s Nurnberg sounded better than it looked. That is, it sounded splendid, for the most part, and looked dowdy.

The performance was dominated by several heroes. The most important, and most imposing, presided in the relatively scrappy pit. Donald Runnicles conducted with marvelous sweep and uncommon flexibility--savoring the lyrical flights, rising majestically to the mighty climaxes, and sensitively supporting the all-too-human larynxes on trial.

At every convoluted turn, he reinforced Wagerian wit and wisdom without resorting to distortion or exaggeration. Unfortunately, that could not always be said of Mansouri’s staging scheme.

Much of the action was gracefully plotted. The stage pictures were certainly neat, the traffic patterns always fluid. The central characters, with one crucial exception, were deftly delineated. Still, Mansouri could not resist some intrusively cutesy touches: self-conscious busywork for each of the minor mastersingers in Act One, and a drunk scene that robbed the night-watchman of his gentle pathos in Act Two.

Most disturbing, however, were the director’s decisions regarding the fragile character of Beckmesser. Wagner made the town clerk something of a critical pedant. He is small-minded and fussy, to be sure, but he should be a formidable adversary. He certainly should not be a clown.

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Mansouri allowed (encouraged?) Robert Orth, a most talented American baritone undertaking the role for the first time, to indulge in obnoxious exaggeration at the outset. This aggressively prissy prig floundered beyond the brink of caricature.

Then, as he encountered inevitable defeat and endured cruel disgrace, Orth’s articulate, even mellifluous Beckmesser suddenly became a faintly tragic figure. It was the right turnabout, but it came too late and with too little preparation.

It should be noted, incidentally, that Mansouri appropriated a narrative climax currently fashionable on revisionist stages in Germany: Just before the final curtain, he engineered a reconciliation between the regretful Beckmesser and the benevolent Hans Sachs. This event may be politically as well as socially correct, but it happens to be sanctioned neither by the music nor the libretto.

The benevolent Hans Sachs on duty was Bernd Weikl, probably the leading contemporary exponent of this demanding, rewarding role. He exudes sturdy warmth while finding a sensible balance between the earthiness of the cobbler and the nobility of the poet. He sings, moreover, with a dark bel-canto baritone that succumbs to strain only at the very end of the marathon challenge, and he points the text knowingly. Most important, perhaps, he savors the value of understatement.

Ben Heppner, the junior Heldentenor from Canada cast as Walther von Stolzing, is being heralded everywhere as a new Lauritz Melchior. Actually, he may be more like a new Jon Vickers. That’s good enough.

The wide-ranging tone at his command is extraordinarily big, amazingly bright, reassuringly strong. It actually rings at the top.

It isn’t deployed with much dynamic subtlety as yet. Never mind. The young man’s stamina is staggering, and he seems smart too. Pray that he doesn’t move too far too fast.

Understatement: Heppner doesn’t cut a particularly romantic figure on the stage. The polite word, I think, is burly. Nevertheless, he creates the right vocal images, and he hardly seemed out of place in the local facsimile of Nurnberg, where most of the male burghers appeared to be very well fed.

Karita Mattila looked willowy and sounded radiant as his sweetly giddy, tomboyish Eva. Catherine Keen seconded her as a hearty Lene, whose appropriate youth was underscored by a tiny, eminently logical change in verbal description.

Lars Magnusson, the sprightly, baby-faced David, was troubled only by the long-winded apprentice’s top notes. Jan-Hendrik Rootering rolled out carpets of thick, black-basso resonance as a Pogner who would rather project general dignity than specific words. John Del Carlo offered a nice and crusty portrait of the baker Kothner, in tandem with a less-than-masterly band of quaint old masters. Victor Ledbetter sang firmly as the rickety night-watchman.

If this wasn’t an altogether perfect “Meistersinger,” it was an undeniably effective one. Wagner remains alive and reasonably well in San Francisco.

He isn’t even alive in Los Angeles . . . .