This opera has been described as "e;the longest single smile in the German language"e;. But Roland Matthews indicates that violence is not far beneath the surface of this portrait of medieval Nuremberg. Arnold Whittall's analysis gives a bird's-eye view of the complexity of the score. Timothy McFarland explores the significance of the choice of subject: that nostalgia for a pre-industrial community, which was a symptom of the German nationalist movement. The long text has many subtleties which opera audiences can hardly appreciate without reading it, and the musical themes are numbered to indicate where they occur.Contents: 'My most genial creation...', Roland Matthews; A Musical Commentary, Amold Whittall; Wagner's Nuremberg, Timothy McFarland; Die Meistersingers von Nuernberg: Poem by Richard Wagner; The Mastersingers of Nuremberg: English translation by Frederick Jameson, revised by Gordon Kember and Norman Feasey

Since its premiere in 1868, Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg has defied repeated upheavals in the cultural-political landscape of German statehood to retain its unofficial status as the German national opera. The work’s significance as a touchstone of national culture survived even such troubling episodes as its public endorsement in 1933 as ‘the most German of all German operas’ by Joseph Goebbels or the rendition in previous years by audiences at Bayreuth of both national and Nazi-party anthems at the work’s culmination. This chequered reception history and apparent propensity for reinterpretation or reclamation has long fuelled debates over the socio-political meanings of Wagner’s musical narrative. On the question of Beckmesser, for instance, heated arguments have surrounded the existence of antisemitic stereotypes in the work as well as their possible indication of a racial-political dimension to Sachs’s restoration of Nuremberg society. Through a combination of musical-textual analysis with critical theory, this book interrogates the ideological underpinnings of Die Meistersinger’s narrative. In four interconnected studies of the characters of Walther, Sachs, Beckmesser, and Eva, the book traces a critical potential within the opera’s construction of provincial and national identities and problematizes existing discourse around its depiction of race and gender.

The Metropolitan Opera on Record: A Discography of the Commercial Recordings is a comprehensive listing of all the commercial sound recordings involving the Chorus and Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera, one of the world's leading musical organizations. Over 900 recording sessions are listed chronologically, starting in 1906 and continuing through the last digital recordings conducted by James Levine in 1998. Entries include excerpts and complete recordings from more than 120 operas in various formats, representing more than 380 artists. The recordings are fully annotated, including the session date and location, the primary source of information, the opera title and composer, matrix number and speed of the recording, the artists performing, the recording company name and number, the format, and the release dates. In addition, Fellers provides a fascinating history of the Met recordings, from the first Leeds & Catlin recordings in the early 1900s to the digital recordings of the 1990s. Additional information on the Opera House String Orchestra and the Radio Broadcasts are included, as well as complete indexes listing the works by composer, title, and artist.

Beyond Reason relates Wagner's works to the philosophical and cultural ideas of his time, centering on the four music dramas he created in the second half of his career: Der Ring des Nibelungen, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and Parsifal. Karol Berger seeks to penetrate the "secret" of large-scale form in Wagner's music dramas and to answer those critics, most prominently Nietzsche, who condemned Wagner for his putative inability to weld small expressive gestures into larger wholes. Organized by individual opera, this is essential reading for both musicologists and Wagner experts.

One of the most controversial figures in the history of ideas as well as music, Richard Wagner continues to stimulate debate whenever his works are performed. Drawing upon the scholarship of The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, the most comprehensive dictionary of opera in the world, Barry Millington offers a concise, portable survey and guide, which will make a welcome addition to the shelf of anyone who loves opera. Millington has completely updated the original pieces and contributed four new chapters on Wagner, including a summary of Wagner productions from 1876 to the present day, a suggested listening and viewing gyide, complete chronology of Wagner's operas, and a glossary of terms that will delight any opera-goer. In addition, there are detailed entries on each of Wagner's operas, a main biographical section, and a group of separate articles on such topics as Leitmotif and Gesamtkunstwerk, as well as a newly revised updated article on Bayreuth. Complete with a new preface, updated bibliography, glossary, and discography--including first release dates of each recording--The New Grove Guide to Wagner and his Operas furnishes both seasoned Wagner-lovers and neophytes with all they require for an in-depth appreciation of this unique historical figure.

With nearly three thousand new entries, the revised edition of Operas in German: A Dictionary is the most current encyclopedic treatment of operas written specifically to a German text from the seventeenth century through 2016. Musicologist Margaret Ross Griffel details the operas’ composers, scores, librettos, first performances, and bibliographic sources. Four appendixes then list composers, librettists, authors whose works inspired or were adapted for the opera librettos, and a chronological listing of the entries in the A–Z section. The bibliography details other dictionaries and encyclopedias, performance studies, collections of plot summaries, general studies on operas, sources on locales where opera premieres took place, works on the history of operas in German, and selective volumes on individual opera composers, librettists, producers, directors, and designers. Finally, two indexes list the main characters in each opera and the names of singers, conductors, producers, composers, directors, choreographers, and arrangers. The revised edition of Operas in German provides opera historians, musicologists, performers, and opera lovers with an invaluable resource for continued study and enjoyment. As the most current encyclopedic collection of German opera from the seventeenth century through the twenty-first, Operas in German is an invaluable resource for opera historians, musicologists, performers, and opera lovers.

This volume is dedicated to the musico-literary oeuvre of Walter Bernhart, professor of English literature at Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz/Austria and pioneer in the field of intermedial relations between literature and other arts and media. It renders accessible a wide variety of texts which are sometimes no longer easily retrievable. The 37 texts collected here in chronological order span the period from 1985 to 2013 and thematically range from contributions to opera programmes and the discussion of musical aspects of Romantic and modernist poetry to inquiries into individual operas and composers as well as into theoretical aspects of word and music relations (e. g. the ways of setting poetry to music, musico-literary ‘comparative poetics’, the concept of ‘genre’ in music and literature, iconicity in both media, their narrative as well as metareferential and illusionist capacities). The volume is of relevance to literary scholars and musicologists but also to all those with an interest in intermediality studies in general and in the relations between literature and music in particular.

"Nuremberg: The Imaginary Capital is a broad study of German cultural and intellectual history since 1500, with a particular emphasis on the period from 1800 to the present. The book explores the ways in which Germans, over the past two centuries, have imagined Nuremberg as a cultural and spiritual capital, focusing feelings of national identity and belonging on the city - or on their Images of it." "Nuremberg: The Imaginary Capital analyzes the way in which a particular city came to be seen, in Germany and elsewhere, as representative of the national whole. The book goes beyond the analysis of particular historical periods by showing how successive epochs' images of Nuremberg built on those preceding them; thus German cultural and intellectual history is shown as an intelligible unity centered around fascination with and veneration for a particular city."