Wagner: Die Meistersinger

Composer Richard Wagner's grandson, Wolfgang Wagner, mounted his grandfather's three-act 1868 opera +Die Meistersinger von N?rnberg (or 'The Mastersingers of Nuremberg') at the Bayreuther Festspiele in 1984. Filmed for this home release, the production stars Bernd Weikl as Hans Sachs, Manfred Schenk as Veit Pogner, Andr?s Moln?r as Kunz Vogelgesang and Martin Egel as Konrad Nachtigall. It features musical accompaniment by the Orchester der Bayreuther Festspiele, as conducted by Horst Stein. The work - Wagner's only comedy - is set in the sixteenth century renaissance city of Nuremberg and concerns the misadventures of the Master Singers (among them the cultivated Beckmesser and the aristocratic Stolzing), a guild of novice poets and musicians who tour throughout Europe together.