Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Bayreuth 2017)

Director Barry Kosky perfects the light moments with the same mastery as the heavy. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the Bayreuth Festival production of Meistersinger offers a brand new interpretation of the well-known work and is considered a highlight of the young festival's history. In the virtuosic opening scene, central figures of the opera plot are introduced as members of the composer's household and later goes on to address the issue of Wagner's anti-Semitism. Of the premiere conducted by Philippe Jordan, a critic of Germany's Tagesspiegel wrote: "Opera at its best: family constellation and phantasmagoria, mania and magic, contradiction, seduction and trauma."