die meistersinger

RICHARD WAGNER

von nürnberg
conductor Opera in three acts
James Levine
Libretto by the composer
production
Otto Schenk Saturday, December 13, 2014
12:00–6:00 pm
set designer
Günther
Schneider-Siemssen
costume designer
Rolf Langenfass
lighting designer
Gil Wechsler
choreographer The production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Carmen De Lavallade
is made possible by a generous gift from
stage director
Mrs. Donald D. Harrington
Paula Suozzi

The revival of this production is made possible

by a gift from Mr. and Mrs. Corbin R. Miller
and Mr. and Mrs. Charles Scribner III,
in honor of Father Owen Lee
general manager
Peter Gelb

music director
James Levine

principal conductor
Fabio Luisi
The 413th Metropolitan Opera performance of

RICHARD WAGNER’S

die meistersinger
von nürnberg
This performance
is being broadcast
live over The
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Foundation, the Annette Dasch
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This performance is h a n s s ach s , s h o e m a k er hans schwar z , stocking - we aver
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Saturday, December 13, 2014, 12:00–6:00PM

This afternoon’s performance is being transmitted live
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BEATRIZ SCHILLER/METROPOLITAN OPERA

Johan Botha as Chorus Master Donald Palumbo
Walther in a scene Musical Preparation Donna Racik, Linda Hall,
from Wagner’s John Keenan, Dan Saunders, and Carol Isaac
Die Meistersinger
von Nürnberg Assistant Stage Directors Eric Einhorn and Stephen Pickover
Stage Band Conductor Jeffrey Goldberg
Prompter Carol Isaac
Met Titles Christopher Bergen
German Coach Marianne Barrett
Painted Slides by Robert Winkler
Assistant to the Costume Designer Elissa Tatigikis Iberti
Scenery, properties, and electrical props constructed
and painted in Metropolitan Opera Shops
Costumes executed by Metropolitan Opera
Costume Department
° The appearance of
Wigs and Makeup executed by Metropolitan Opera
Johan Botha in this
Wig and Makeup Department
performance is made
possible, in part, by
Boots and shoes by Yefim and Dora Slusker and
the Lauritz Melchior Peerless Shoe Service
Endowment Fund.
This performance is made possible in part by public funds
* Graduate of the from the New York State Council on the Arts.
Lindemann Young Artist
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Synopsis

Nuremberg, 16th century

Act I
St. Katherine’s Church

Intermission (AT APPROXIMATELY 1:30 PM)

Act II
The street between Sachs’s workshop and Pogner’s house

Intermission (AT APPROXIMATELY 3:15 PM)

Act III
scene 1 Sachs’s workshop
scene 2 The St. John’s Day Festival, outside Nuremberg’s walls

Act I
At St. Katherine’s Church, the visiting young knight Walther von Stolzing
approaches Eva, daughter of the wealthy goldsmith Pogner, who is attending
mass with her companion, Magdalene. Eva tells her admirer that she is to be
engaged the following day to the winner of a song contest held by the local guild
of mastersingers. David, Magdalene’s sweetheart and apprentice to the cobbler
and mastersinger Hans Sachs, explains the rules of song composing to Walther,
who is surprised by the complicated ins and outs of mastersinging. Meanwhile
David’s fellow apprentices set up for a preliminary trial singing. The masters
arrive, including Eva’s father, and Walther expresses his desire to become a
mastersinger in order to ask for Eva’s hand. The pedantic town clerk Beckmesser,
who also wants to marry Eva, is immediately suspicious of the young knight. As
proof that tradesmen value art, Pogner offers his daughter’s hand as the prize for
the next day’s contest and explains that she can reject the winner, but must marry
a mastersinger or can marry no one. Walther introduces himself and describes
his natural, self-taught methods of musical composition, provoking mocking
comments from Beckmesser. For his trial song, Walther sings an impulsive tune
in praise of love and spring, breaking many of the masters’ rules. Beckmesser
vigorously keeps a count of his errors. Rejected by the masters, Walther leaves,
while Sachs reflects on the unexpected appeal of Walther’s song.

Act II
That evening in front of Pogner’s house, David tells Magdalene about Walther’s
misfortune, and Eva gets the disappointing news from Magdalene. Across the
street, Sachs sits down to work in his doorway, but the memory of Walther’s
song distracts him. Eva appears, hoping to learn more about the knight’s trial.
When Sachs mentions that Beckmesser hopes to win her the next day, she
38
suggests she wouldn’t be unhappy if Sachs himself won the contest. Sachs, who
has known Eva since she was a child, responds with paternal affection. Asked
about Walther, he pretends to disapprove of the young man, which leads Eva to
reveal her true feelings and to run off. In the street, she is met by Walther who
convinces her to elope. The two hide as a night watchman passes. Sachs, who
has overheard the lovers’ conversation, decides to help them but prevent their
flight. He lights the street with a lantern, forcing Eva and Walther to stay put.
Meanwhile Beckmesser arrives to serenade Eva. As he is about to begin, Sachs
launches into a cheerful cobbler’s song, much to the clerk’s irritation, claiming
he needs to finish his work. The two men agree that both would make progress
if Beckmesser were to sing while Sachs marked any broken rules of style with his
cobbler’s hammer. Beckmesser finally sings his song, directing it at Magdalene
who is impersonating Eva at a window of Pogner’s house. Sachs frequently
interrupts with hammer strokes, to Beckmesser’s mounting anger. Walther
and Eva observe the scene from their hiding place, bewildered at first, then
amused. Confusion increases when David appears and attacks Beckmesser for
apparently wooing Magdalene. Finally the night-shirted neighbors, roused from
sleep, join in the general tumult until the sound of the night watchman’s horn
disperses them. Pogner leads Eva inside while Sachs drags Walther and David
into his shop. The night watchman passes through the suddenly deserted street.

Act III
The next morning in Sachs’s workshop, David apologizes for his unruly behavior.
Alone, Sachs reflects on the madness of the world. Walther arrives to tell Sachs
of a wondrous dream he had. Recognizing a potential prize song, Sachs takes
down the words and helps Walther to fashion them according to the rules of
mastersinging. When they leave to dress for the contest, Beckmesser appears.
He notices Walther’s poem and, mistaking it for one of Sachs’s own, pockets
it. The returning cobbler tells him to keep it. Certain of his victory with a song
written by Sachs, Beckmesser leaves. Now Eva arrives, pretending there is
something wrong with her shoe. Walther returns, dressed for the festival, and
repeats his prize song for her. Eva is torn between her love for Walther and her
affection for Sachs, but the older man turns her towards the younger. When
Magdalene arrives, Sachs promotes David to journeyman and asks Eva to bless
the new song. All five reflect on their happiness—Sachs’s tinged with gentle
regret—then leave for the contest.

Guilds and citizens assemble in a meadow outside the city. The masters enter
and the people cheer Sachs, who responds with a moving address in praise of
art and the coming contest. Beckmesser is the first to sing. Nervously trying to
fit Walther’s verses to his own music he makes nonsense of the words, earning
laughter from the crowd. He furiously turns on Sachs and runs off. Walther then
steps forward and delivers the song. Entranced, the people proclaim him the
winner, but Walther refuses the masters’ necklace. Sachs convinces him to
accept—tradition and its upholders must be honored, as must those who create
innovation. Youth and age are reconciled, Walther has won Eva, and the people
once again hail Sachs.
Visit metopera.org 39
In Focus

Richard Wagner

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

Premiere: Munich Court Opera, Munich, 1868
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is Richard Wagner’s only comic opera, a
monumental yet intimate love story that is also a journey through the artistic
process. The story revolves around the creation of a song, written by a brash,
self-taught poet. The plot follows a very typical operatic formula: young love
winning out over meddlesome old men. The referee of this entanglement is
Hans Sachs, one of the most memorable characters in opera and a real-life
shoemaker, composer–poet, and author of drama, fiction, and essays. One
of the longest operas in the repertory, Die Meistersinger makes enormous
demands on soloists, conductor, chorus, and orchestra. It has astounded
musicians and critics since its successful premiere.

The Creator
Richard Wagner (1813–83) was the complex, controversial creator of music-
drama masterpieces that stand at the center of today’s operatic repertory.
Born in Leipzig, Germany, he was an artistic revolutionary who reimagined
every supposition about music and theater. Wagner insisted that words
and music were equals in his works. This approach led to the idea of the
Gesamtkunstwerk, or “total work of art,” combining music, poetry, architecture,
painting, and other disciplines, a notion that has had an impact on creative
fields far beyond opera.

The Setting
The opera takes place in the symbolically important town of Nuremberg,
in southern Germany, around the year 1560. Nuremberg stood for many
things: it was a political center of the Holy Roman Empire, an ill-defined state
encompassing Germany and Austria whose name suggested international
significance. Nuremberg was also known as a center of business and excellent
craftsmanship, a tradition we see represented in the opera. Here, Nuremberg
becomes an idealized representation of everything good about German
tradition—an egalitarian hotbed of art and thought where a shoemaker really
could be (and was) respected as an artist and a philosopher.

40
The Music
The score of Die Meistersinger is a sublime achievement, at once lyric, grand,
and amazingly detailed. It shows Wagner’s absolute command of his craft, from
the orchestra (first shown in the stentorian and irresistible prelude) to vocal
solos (the evolution of the tenor’s song from his first solo in Act I to its two
incarnations in Act III, and Hans Sachs’s meditation on human folly, the famous
“Wahn” Monologue in Act III) to ensembles (the transcendentally gorgeous
quintet in Act III). The many choruses also demonstrate the scope of Wagner’s
genius, most notably the foursquare chorale that opens the work, the near
anarchy of the complex riot scene in Act II, and the playful apprentices’ songs
in Act III.

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the Met

The Met gave the United States premiere of this opera in 1886 under Anton
Seidl, the remarkable Hungarian-American conductor who assisted Wagner in
Bayreuth. The cast featured leading stars of the Met’s German era, including
Emil Fischer, who sang the role of Hans Sachs 34 times over six seasons.
Notable subsequent interpreters of the role include Edouard de Reszke (1895–
1902), Friedrich Schorr, Herbert Janssen, Otto Edelmann, and Thomas Stewart.
Conductors include Walter Damrosch (1890–1902) and Arturo Toscanini (who
led 19 performances between 1910 and 1915), George Szell (1945–46), and
Karl Böhm (1959). Music director James Levine conducted the premiere of
the current production in 1993 and for 29 subsequent performances. Among
the memorable sopranos who have appeared in Meistersinger at the Met are
Johanna Gadski, Elisabeth Rethberg, Eleanor Steber, Lisa Della Casa, Astrid
Varnay, Pilar Lorengar, and Karita Mattila, while notable tenors include Jean de
Reszke, Sándor Kónya, Leo Slezak, Jess Thomas, and Ben Heppner.

Visit metopera.org 41
A scene from Aida

e Metropolitan Opera is pleased to salute

Bank of America in recognition of its generous
support during the 2014–15 season.

PHOTO: MARTY SOHL / METROPOLITAN OPERA

Program Note

I
n the spring of 1861, Richard Wagner endured the very worst humiliation of his
mature career—a humiliation of Beckmesserian proportions. The high-profile
revival of his early opera Tannhäuser, thoroughly revised for its Paris premiere,
caused such a scandalous uproar that Wagner pulled up stakes and canceled
the production after only three performances. That failure reinforced his burning
sense of resentment against the opera capital of the world, where he had already
experienced crushing rejection nearly two decades before.
Later that summer, prospects fell through for the premiere of his most recent
work, Tristan und Isolde (completed in 1859), which was to have taken place in
Vienna. Dozens of rehearsals confirmed the score’s reputation as “unperformable.”
Meanwhile, Wagner’s perennial troubles with his estranged first wife, the actress
Minna Planer, along with alarming new accumulations to his mountain of debt, all
intensified the feeling that he had reached an impasse more daunting than ever
before in his career. The inauguration of the Bayreuth Festival still lay 15 years in
the future.
“I feel that I need a break from the very real seriousness of my everyday
preoccupations in order to create something quickly that will bring me into more
immediate contact with the practicalities of our contemporary theaters,” wrote
Wagner in October 1861 to his publisher, Franz Schott, by way of explaining his
sudden proposal to write “an easier, less demanding, and therefore more quickly
completed work.” The composer even ventured that he would be able to deliver
the score “finished and ready for performance by next winter.”
In fact it would take Wagner another six years to complete Die Meistersinger
von Nürnberg. This was not the first time he miscalculated the dimensions
required for a new creation, including the length of its genesis and the demands
the finished work would make on both performers and audiences—let alone on
opera company budgets. In 1857, around two-thirds of the way through Siegfried,
Wagner had set aside work on the Ring in order to immerse himself in Tristan,
which he similarly predicted at first would be an easy-to-produce moneymaker.
The Meistersinger project prolonged Wagner’s postponement of the Ring (though
he did interrupt the new opera to continue orchestrating the music he’d already
drafted for Siegfried).
What might explain Wagner’s surprising determination to devote energy to a
genre he initially described outright as “grand comic opera”? He had attempted
it only once before, in his early twenties, with Das Liebesverbot, an adaptation of
Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. Comedy seems thoroughly incompatible with
the demands of “heavy” Wagnerian music drama. Even if he eventually dropped
that label from Meistersinger, the historical specificity of its setting—“Nuremberg,
about the middle of the 16th century”—represents an exception among Wagner’s
mature music dramas. In contrast to Meistersinger, these works reject “historical”
opera in favor of the indeterminate, timeless setting of myth and legend.
For one thing, Wagner had already stored up the idea for Meistersinger in
the middle of his tenure as music director in Dresden. This was well before he
formulated the criteria for his revolutionary vision of the music drama, which
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Program Note CONTINUED

evolved in tandem with his work on the Ring tetralogy. While vacationing at the spa
town of Marienbad in July 1845, and fresh from completing Tannhäuser, Wagner
sketched out a substantial prose draft for what he later termed “an especially
cheerful subject” that, like Tannhäuser, also revolved around a climactic song
contest. He noted that this “vivid picture of Hans Sachs and the mastersingers of
Nuremberg” appealed because it might serve as a light-hearted counterbalance
to the tragedy of Tannhäuser.
Perhaps his recent fixation on the earlier opera’s abortive Paris production
re-triggered the idea of Meistersinger as a temporary relief from the stress of
tragedy (and from Wagner’s own litany of sufferings in this period). Moreover, the
composer’s travels through Nuremberg in August, just after a major choral festival
had been held there, may have reawakened his interest in the significance of the
city as an idealized symbol for a high point in German culture; only since 1860 had
a partial amnesty allowed Wagner, a political refugee in Switzerland throughout
the 1850s, to set foot again on German soil.
Over the intervening years, Wagner’s appraisal of the potential lurking in this
material—and above all in the character of the shoemaker-poet Hans Sachs—had
altered significantly. It is possible that he still regarded the project as an uncomplicated
comic diversion when he first took it off the shelf again. But more likely Wagner was
merely trying to sell it as such to Schott to justify a much-needed cash advance when,
in his pitch letter of 1861, he predicted that “the style of the piece, in the poem and
the music alike, will be thoroughly light and popular.”
During the next several months, Wagner crafted a libretto that on one level
is populist and straightforward, though deliberately old-fashioned (evoking the
simplicity of the short rhymed verse Goethe employed in Part I of Faust, which
itself emulates the idiom cultivated by Sachs in his poems). Yet the libretto’s
layering of esoteric allusions at times approaches the polyphonic complexity of
the music—a hallmark of this score already foreshadowed by the prelude, which
Wagner composed, contrary to his usual practice, before he had even completed
the libretto. The Meistersinger text weaves together a fabric characteristically
drawn from a wide array of sources. Among these are the work of the contemporary
literary historian Georg Gottfried Gervinus, Jacob Grimm’s history of master singing,
a biography and play about the real-life Nuremberger Hans Sachs (1494–1576),
Sachs’ own poetry and plays, a Goethe poem about Sachs, and the fiction of such
early German Romantics as E.T.A. Hoffmann that make use of the atmospheric
setting of old Nuremberg.
From this mass of disparate material Wagner constructed a remarkably coherent
drama whose specific setting serves as readily as the mythic contexts of his other
music dramas as a universal metaphor for the human situation. The opera’s interplay
of ideas and dramatic motifs pushes Meistersinger far beyond the realm of “light
comedy,” even as it integrates such standard-issue comic patterns as the rivalry of
an unsuitable older suitor (Beckmesser) for the desirable Eva and the triumph of
the young couple against the odds. Yet the more comforting and familiar comedic
elements provide a kind of Trojan horse for deeper reflections. These indeed are
48
consonant with the essentially tragic philosophical outlook Wagner had evolved
in recent years, which had compelled him to write Tristan while also reshaping his
thinking about the Ring.
The most immediately obvious embodiment of this outlook is the profounder
characterization of Hans Sachs, in comparison with Wagner’s 1845 sketch. Sachs
is developed with more complexity than anyone else in the opera’s large cast—to
the point that he has come to be considered the most sympathetic, most humane
of Wagner’s signature bass-baritone characters. Deeper reflections likewise shape
the entire dramaturgy of the third act—the longest single act in all Wagner—
with its resolution in both the private and the public spheres of the principal
issues at stake throughout the opera: the relationship between innovation and
tradition, inspiration and discipline, the artist and the community. The composer’s
identification with the revolutionary young hero Walther, apparent in his earlier
vision of Meistersinger, has by now been redirected onto the older, far more self-
aware widower Sachs—echoing a similar shift in the respective significance of
Siegfried and Wotan in the Ring. Yet no other character in Wagner approaches
the warmth and humanity of Sachs or the gentle but palpable anguish of his
renunciation of desire for Eva, the necessary step before the opera can continue
on to the final scene of the song contest.
Far from offering a “cheerful” comic interlude or even distraction from his
problems, Wagner’s new understanding of Meistersinger came to incorporate the
very core of his vision of art as the modern replacement for outmoded religion,
of art as the agent that can reveal the truth of the world and that can order our
personal and social relationships. Meistersinger begins with a representation of the
community at worship, joined in song, but culminates with a twofold glorification
of art. The first comes in the people’s spontaneous acclamation of the young
interloper Walther von Stolzing as a mastersinger and winner of the song contest
(and consequently of Eva Pogner’s hand in marriage), while the second—to even
more resounding effect, because it concludes the opera—gives the spotlight to
Hans Sachs, whose name is proclaimed by the crowd in the final chorus.
The power of this victorious outcome and of Meistersinger’s overall sense
of affirmation owes much to a darker undercurrent that is integral to the entire
work. Recent interpretations have come to focus on a dimension that sets the
opera’s perceived accessibility and “sunny” nature in disturbing relief: the post-
Holocaust decoding, initiated by Theodor Adorno and extended by other scholars
over the past quarter-century, of Beckmesser and his comeuppance as a metaphor
for Wagner’s relentless anti-Semitism. According to this line of argument, it was
no coincidence that Wagner chose to reissue his notoriously toxic pamphlet
Jewishness in Music in 1869 (and for the first time signed under his own name), the
year after Meistersinger had its resoundingly successful premiere in Munich.
Beckmesser’s “artistic failings are precisely those ascribed to the Jews” in the
pamphlet, writes the Wagner expert Barry Millington. On the other hand, runs
the counterargument, Jews had been expelled from the historical Nuremberg

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Program Note CONTINUED

in 1499, and the respected position held by Beckmesser as a leader of the

community makes it implausible that Wagner intended to single him out as
the dangerously unassimilable “alien” caricatured in his anti-Semitic diatribe.
Beckmesser’s humiliation, in this reading, reflects the sadistic treatment inherent
in the mechanism of comedy (think Malvolio in Twelfth Night) and is enhanced
by Wagner’s scorn for traditionalist critics, while the Marker’s garbled song
parodies Italian coloratura—another “foreign” influence to be avoided.
Further complicating the issue is the unfortunate reception history by which
Meistersinger found special favor in Hitler’s Third Reich, thus unavoidably
tainting the associations conjured by Sachs’ final paean to the purity of “sacred
German art.” Instead of a simplistic either/or approach, it would be more
realistic to acknowledge a conflation of these various elements in Wagner’s
characterization of Beckmesser, including the irrational hatred that may have
unconsciously been mixed in during Wagner’s creative process. In his book
Nuremberg: The Imaginary Capital, Stephen Brockman argues that Beckmesser
should “be seen not literally as a Jew but as a dramatically necessary structural
element of the opera.” At the same time, Beckmesser “plays the same role
that Jews play in German anti-Semitism, and for this reason the identification of
Beckmesser as a Jew is a highly productive misreading, as demonstrated by the
controversy it has generated.”
One reason Wagner’s composition of Meistersinger took so long was that
he needed to find the right musical language to express a milieu that, while
inspired by a specific historical setting, was ultimately a thoroughly reimagined
world far removed from the Renaissance Nuremberg that flourished as a center
of banking and international trade. Commentators are fond of emphasizing the
dramatic contrasts between Tristan’s chromatic night world and the gloriously
bright C major that frames Meistersinger and its celebration of St. John’s Eve.
Yet the songs, marches, choruses, quasi-Lutheran chorales, and radiant third-act
quintet hardly represent “reversions” to a less-complicated musical language.
More than any other creation by Wagner, Meistersinger is “about” music itself
and the entire range of what music can convey, deep below the surface text of
what the characters are singing—including, famously, a hair-raising quotation
from Tristan itself in the third act.
This “meta-musical” aspect encompasses a remarkable spectrum, from
complex ensembles to the psychological intimacy of the portrait of Sachs in
the third act. The effectiveness of Wagner’s process, as the philosopher Michael
Tanner observes, is to keep moving our focus “from the outside—consideration
of the whole monumental work—to areas within it.” The result is that it becomes
a “mistake” to settle for which among its “possible perspectives is the right one.
But Wagner has ensured that we shall not be able to rest from the attempt.”
—Thomas May

50
The Cast

James Levine
music director and conductor (cincinnati, ohio)

met history Since his 1971 debut conducting Tosca, he has

appeared with the Met in 2,500 performances, concerts, and
recitals—more than any other conductor in the company’s history.
Of the 85 operas he has led at the Met, 13 were company premieres
(including Stiffelio, I Lombardi, I Vespri Siciliani, La Cenerentola, Benvenuto Cellini, Porgy
and Bess, Erwartung, Moses und Aron, Idomeneo, and La Clemenza di Tito). He also led the
world premieres of Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles and Harbison’s The Great Gatsby.
this season In his 44th season at the Met he conducts the new production of Le Nozze di
Figaro and revivals of Ernani, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Les Contes d’ Hoffmann,
Un Ballo in Maschera, and The Rake’s Progress; three concerts with the MET Orchestra at
Carnegie Hall with soloists Maurizio Pollini, Elı̄na Garanča, and Yefim Bronfman; and two
chamber concerts with the MET Chamber Ensemble at Carnegie’s Weill and Zankel Halls.

Karen Cargill
mezzo - soprano ( arbroath, scotland)

this season Magdalene in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the

Met, Waltraute in Götterdämmerung with the Canadian Opera,
and concerts with the Philadelphia Orchestra, London Symphony,
Netherlands Philharmonic, and Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
met appearances Anna in Les Troyens and Waltraute (debut, 2012).
career highlights Waltraute at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the First Norn in
Götterdämmerung at Covent Garden, Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Isabella in
L’Italiana in Algeri with Scottish Opera, and Suzuki in Madama Butterfly with English
National Opera. She appears regularly in concerts with the BBC Symphony and London
Philharmonic Orchestras, Hallé Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and London
Symphony Orchestra. She is an associate artist of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra where
she has sung Berlioz’s La Mort de Cléopâtre, L’Enfance du Christ, and Les Nuits d’Été,
Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder, and Béatrice in Berlioz’s
Béatrice et Bénedict.

Annette Dasch
soprano (munich, germany)

this season Eva in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the Met,

the title role of Martinů’s Juliette in Zurich, Elsa in Lohengrin at the
Bayreuth Festival, and concerts with the Birmingham Symphony
Orchestra, Lisbon’s Gulbenkian Orchestra, and the Bavarian Radio
Symphony Orchestra.
met appearances The Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro (debut, 2009).

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The Cast CONTINUED

career highlights She has sung Donna Anna in Don Giovanni at La Scala, Berlin State
Opera, and Munich’s Bavarian State Opera, the Countess at Covent Garden and Paris’s
Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte at the Salzburg Easter Festival and
in Munich, Antonia in Les Contes d’Hoffmann at the Paris Opera, Eva in Budapest, and
Elsa in Lohengrin at La Scala, the Bayreuth Festival, and in Munich. She has also appeared
with the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Dresden Staatskapelle, Amsterdam’s
Concertgebouw, and the Orchestra de la Suisse Romande.

Paul Appleby
tenor (south bend, indiana )

this season David in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Tom

Rakewell in The Rake’s Progress at the Met and Don Ottavio in Don
Giovanni for his debut with the San Diego Opera and in concert
with the Milwaukee Symphony.
met appearances Brian in Two Boys, Chevalier de la Force in Dialogues des Carmélites,
Hylas in Les Troyens, Demetrius in The Enchanted Island, and Brighella in Ariadne auf
Naxos (debut, 2011).
career highlights Recent performances include Ferrando in Così fan tutte in Frankfurt
and for his debut with the Canadian Opera Company, Tamino in Die Zauberflöte for his
debut with Washington National Opera, and a concert with the New York Philharmonic.
He has also sung Fritz in Offenbach’s La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein with the Santa
Fe Opera, Ferrando with Boston Lyric Opera, Tom Rakewell in Frankfurt, Agenore in Il
Re Pastore with Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, and Lysander in Britten’s A Midsummer
Night’s Dream and Gomatz in Zaïde with Wolf Trap Opera. He is a graduate of the Met’s
Lindemann Young Artist Development Program.

Johan Botha
tenor (rustenburg , south africa )

this season Walther in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the

Met, Radamès in Aida in Hamburg, Bacchus in Ariadne auf Naxos
and the title role of Parsifal at the Vienna State Opera, the title
role of Tannhäuser at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Rinaldo in concert in
Dresden, the title role of Otello in Cologne, and Siegmund in Die Walküre at the Bayreuth
Festival.
met appearances Radamès, Siegmund, Canio in Pagliacci (debut, 1997), Florestan in
Fidelio, Calàf in Turandot, and the title roles of Otello, Don Carlo, and Lohengrin.
career highlights Among his recent performances are Siegmund at the Vienna State
Opera, Otello with Munich’s Bavarian State Opera, Walther at Lyric Opera of Chicago,
and Parsifal at the Salzburg Easter Festival. Additional performances include Pollione in
Norma in Berlin, Apollo in Strauss’s Daphne and the title role of Andrea Chénier at the
Vienna State Opera, and the Emperor in Die Frau ohne Schatten at Covent Garden and La
Scala. He has also been heard at Salzburg Festival, Barcelona’s Liceu, Los Angeles Opera,
Paris’s Bastille Opera and Théâtre du Châtelet, and in Dresden and Frankfurt.

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Martin Gantner
baritone (freiburg , germany)

this season Kothner in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg for his

debut at the Met, the Music Master in Ariadne auf Naxos at the
Paris Opera and in Zurich, and Telramund in Lohengrin and Don
Pizarro in Fidelio in Zurich.
career highlights Don Pizarro at the Vienna State Opera, Faninal in Der Rosenkavalier
and Eisenstein in Die Fledermaus at Munich’s Bavarian State Opera, the Speaker in Die
Zauberflöte at the Salzburg Festival, Wolfram in Tannhäuser in Bologna, and Jochanaan
in Salome in St. Gallen. He has also sung Dr. Falke in Die Fledermaus at Lyric Opera of
Chicago, the Music Master at Los Angeles Opera, Nick Shadow in The Rake’s Progress
in Zurich, Albert in Werther at the Vienna State Opera, and Eisenstein at the Berlin State
Opera. He was named Kammersänger of Munich’s Bavarian State Opera in 2005.

Hans-Peter König
bass (düsseldorf, germany)

this season Pogner in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the

Met, Hagen in Götterdämmerung at Munich’s Bavarian State
Opera, Zaccaria in Nabucco at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the
Commendatore in Don Giovanni in Düsseldorf, King Marke in
Tristan und Isolde in Toulouse, and King Henry in Lohengrin and the Commendatore in
Don Giovanni in Duisburg.
met appearances Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte (debut, 2010), Daland in Der Fliegende
Holländer, and Fafner, Hunding, and Hagen in the Ring cycle.
career highlights A member of Düsseldorf’s Deutsche Oper am Rhein, he was awarded
the title of Kammersänger there for his outstanding contributions to music. His repertoire
encompasses leading bass roles of Wagner, Verdi, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, and Strauss,
among others, which he has sung with many of the world’s leading opera companies
(including the Grammy Award-winning Ring cycle at the Met). He has appeared at a guest
artist at Covent Garden, Paris’s Bastille Opera, La Scala, Barcelona’s Liceu, and Florence’s
Maggio Musicale, as well as in Dresden, Tokyo, Hamburg, and São Paulo and at festivals
in Bayreuth and Baden-Baden.

Johannes Martin Kränzle

baritone ( augsburg , germany)

this season Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg for his

debut at the Met, the Music Master in Ariadne auf Naxos in Zurich,
the title role of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle in Wiesbaden and Paris,
and Amfortas in Parsifal and Don Giovanni in Frankfurt.

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The Cast CONTINUED

career highlights Since joining the Frankfurt Opera in 1998, he has appeared with that
company in many leading roles including Wolfram in Tannhäuser, Tomsky in The Queen
of Spades, and Don Alfonso in Così fan tutte. He has also sung Andrei in War and Peace
in Cologne, Gryaznoy in Rimsky-Korsakov´s The Tsar’s Bride at La Scala, Papageno in Die
Zauberflöte with the San Francisco Opera, the Count in Le Nozze di Figaro in Hamburg,
Eisenstein in Die Fledermaus and Danilo in The Merry Widow in Geneva, Nietzsche in the
world premiere of Wolfgang Rihm’s Dionysos at the Salzburg Festival, Beckmesser at the
Glyndebourne Festival, and Alberich in the Ring cycle at the Berlin State Opera and La
Scala. He was named Opernwelt magazine’s 2011 singer of the year.

Matthew Rose
bass (brighton, england)

this season Colline in La Bohème and the Night Watchman in

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the Met and Callistene in
Donizetti’s Poliuto and Collantinus in Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia
at the Glyndebourne Festival.
met apearances Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Talbot in Maria Stuarda, and
Colline (debut, 2011).
career highlights Bottom at La Scala, Lyon Opera, Covent Garden, Houston Grand Opera,
and for his 2006 debut at the Glyndebourne Festival; Sparafucile in Rigoletto, Sarastro
in Die Zauberflöte, and Talbot at Covent Garden; Leporello in Don Giovanni and Nick
Shadow in The Rake’s Progress at the Glyndebourne Festival; and Claggart in Billy Budd
for the English National Opera. He has also sung Figaro in Le Nozze di Figaro at Munich’s
Bavarian State Opera and Welsh National Opera, Leporello at the Deutsche Oper Berlin,
and Henry VIII in Anna Bolena in Bordeaux.

Michael Volle
baritone (freudenstadt, germany)

this season Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at

the Met, Amfortas in Parsifal and Wotan in the Ring cycle with
the Vienna State Opera, Mandryka in Arabella in Barcelona, and
Scarpia in Tosca, Dr. Schön/Jack the Ripper in Lulu, and the title
role of Wozzeck with the Berlin State Opera,
met appearances Mandryka (debut, 2014).
career highlights He has sung Count Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro, Kurwenal in Tristan
und Isolde, Amfortas, Wozzeck, and Eugene Onegin at Munich’s Bavarian State Opera and
Zurga in Les Pêcheurs de Perles, Rodrigo in Don Carlo, Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger
von Nürnberg, Eugene Onegin, Golaud in Pelléas et Mélisande, Barak in Die Frau ohne
Schatten, Wolfram in Tannhäuser, and Hans Sachs in Zurich. He has also appeared at
Covent Garden, Deutsche Oper Berlin, La Scala, Paris Opera, and the Bayreuth and
Salzburg Festivals. He was named Opernwelt magazine’s 2014 singer of the year.

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