An important aspect of Keith Warner's production is the dream. Warner imagines Sachs' dream as a creative need, in the sense that he creates a story about his feelings. At the same time, he wanted this dreaming to be contagious. That those who allow themselves to be infected and have the necessary talent can create their own worlds, a kind of illusion. Suddenly Sachs begins to immerse himself in Walther's imagination, he wanders through his worlds and, conversely, Walther can access Sachs' worlds, and Eva also joins in. The relationship between reality and the artist's inner imagination or individual dream becomes fluid.

 

"The Mastersingers form – precisely through their apparent contrast – a unity with Tristan und Isolde, Wagner’s Opus metaphysicum, in which his entire oeuvre can, as it were, be seen through the lens of a magnifying glass. Moreover, it is only through the combined perspective of these two works that one can finally grasp what was important to Wagner. For he presents everything that was brought to perfection in Tristan as an antithesis in Die Meistersinger: chromaticism versus diatonicism, for instance, or harmony versus counterpoint, heroes versus commoners, tragedy versus comedy.” (Premiere conductor Philippe Jordan)

 

The Mastersingers of Nuremberg, too, had a long gestation period – as was so often the case with Richard Wagner. As early as 1845, he wrote a first prose draft for what would later become a three-act opera, but it took around two decades before the score was available in its final form. On 21 June 1868, the work – originally conceived as a comic counterpart to Tannhäuser – received its world premiere at the Munich Court Opera.

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(Source: wiener-staatsoper.at)