Metropolitan Opera Archives

Even with two eleventh-hour substitutions - that of Paul Breisach for George Szell as conductor and of Frederick Gynrod for Herbert Janssen as Hans Sachs - the Metropolitan managed to give us at the Opera House last evening the finest "Meistersinger" we have heard since the brilliant Chicago performance of the early '30's. And a really good "Meistersinger" is just about the best thing that the operatic stage has to offer.

Most of us had never heard of Mr. Gynrod, and if he is not the most outstanding Sachs in our experience, he nevertheless conveyed in something like full measure, the nobility of the cobbler-poet and of the music that Wagner has assigned to him. It was a disappointment, of course, not to hear Mr. Szell in opera, and in this opera particularly, but Mr. Breisach filled his shoes with a degree of adequacy that was both surprising and gratifying. Frankly, we didn't know he had it in him.

New York, as Boston well knows, rose warmly to this, its first, wartime "Meistersinger." Next to Mr. Szell, the most praised participant was Gerhard Pechner as Beckmesser. Certainly there has been no such richly comic projection of the spiteful town clerk since that of Otto Goritz. Last evening he very nearly stole the show. His fellow mastersingers, each and every one of them, were sharply characterized, but special mention must be made of Mack Harrell's Kothner and the Pogner of Emanuel List. Eloquent in song and convincing in action was the Walther of Charles Kullman. To probe again into the files of memory, the David of John Garris bears comparison with that of Albert Reiss.

As for the ladies, the Eva of Eleanor Steber was altogether adorable, as winsome an impersonation as one could imagine and withal good to hear, while Kerstin Thorborg's Magdalene is yet another of her striking achievements.

Search by season: 1944-45

Search by title: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg,

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