Triumphantly premiered in 1868, "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg" evokes the singing guilds of mid-16th-century Nuremburg, a focal point of the Northern European Renaissance. Wagner's only mature comic opera concerns the young knight Walther von Stolzing's love for Eva whom the town clerk Beckmesser also covets. Against the background of a singing contest, cobbler-singer Hans Sachs'...
