Hans Sachs as Opera hero

After completing this work [Tannhäuser] I was immediately able to take a rest at a Bohemian spa [Marienbad – Mariánské Lázne].
There, as has always been the case whenever I am able to with- draw from the smell of stage lighting and my “services” in their atmosphere, I soon felt light and merry; for the first time, my characteristic cheerfulness asserted itself with appreciable artistic significance.
With almost arbitrary deliberateness, I had of late already decided to write a comic opera next; I remember that in particular the well meant council of good friends had contributed to the idea, for they wished to see me write an opera of the “lighter genre”, because that would give me entrée to the German theatres and so precipitate an improvement in my financial circumstances, since my persistent lack of success had begun to assume alarming proportions. Just as the Athenians followed a tragedy with a light satyric drama, there suddenly came to me during that holiday the vision of a comic work, a suggestive satyric drama that in truth might follow my “Song Contest on the Wartburg”.

It was “the master singers at Nürnberg”, with Hans Sachs at their head. I set Hans Sachs as the last manifestation of the artistically productive spirit of the people and contrasted him with the bourgeois existence of the master singers, giving very personal expression to the altogether droll, tablature-poetic pedantry of the “Marker” figure. As is generally known (except perhaps by our critics), the “Marker” was an overseer selected by the singers’ guild, who had to “mark” with pen strokes the breaches of the rules by the contestants and specifically by those applying for membership. Anyone receiving a certain number of strokes was disqualified.

The oldest member of the guild then offers the hand of his young daughter to the master who wins the forthcoming public singing match.
The Marker, who is already courting the girl, gains a rival in the person of a young knight who, enthused after reading the Book of Heroes and the old minnesingers, leaves his neglected and decaying ancestral castle to learn the art of the master singers in Nürnberg.

He applies for admission to the guild, particularly because he has fallen head over heels in love with the prize maiden, “whom only a master of the guild shall win”; at the contest he sings an enthusiastic song in praise of women that incessantly offends the Marker, so that he fails the aspirant half way through his song.

Sachs, who has taken a liking to the young man, then thwarts him – for his own good – in his desperate attempt to elope with the girl; in doing so, he also takes the opportunity to annoy the Marker terribly.
The latter, who had previously taken Sachs to task for being tardy in completing a pair of shoes for him, stands before the girl’s window at night and serenades her to test her response to the song with which he hopes to win her, for he needs to be sure of her decisive vote in the contest. Sachs, whose shoemaker’s workshop is opposite the girl’s house, also begins to sing loudly when the Marker starts his serenade, telling the indignant singer that it is necessary if he is to stay awake while working so late and declaring that the work is urgent, as no-one should know better than the man who chided his cobbler so harshly about his shoes. Sachs at last promises the unhappy man he will stop, but only if he may draw attention to the mistakes he finds in the Marker’s song, according to his feelings and in his manner – as a shoemaker – with a hammer-blow on the shoe each time.
The Marker resumes his singing and Sachs hammers often and repeatedly on his last. The Marker enters in a fury; Sachs asks him with composure if his song is over. “Far from it,” cries the angry man.

Sachs now laughingly takes the shoes outside and declares they have just been finished by the “mark of the Marker”. Bellowing out the remainder of his song without a break between verses, the Marker stalks off in despair, and his songs fails miserably in the estimation of the girl, who is seen vigorously shaking her head through the window. The next day, he disconsolately demands from Sachs a new song to court his love; Sachs gives him a poem by the young knight, but claims he does not know where it comes from. He warns that it must be sung to a perfectly appropriate “tune”. With misplaced confidence, the vain Marker submits himself to the public verdict of masters and people and sings the poem to a completely unsuitable and disfiguring tune, so that he again fails, this time finally. Furious, he accuses Sachs of fraud for having given him a disgraceful poem; Sachs declares that the poem is altogether good, only it must be sung to an appropriate tune. It is decided that he who knows the correct tune shall be the winner.
That turns out to be the young knight and he wins the bride; but when he is offered membership in the guild, he declines. Sachs then defends the master singers’ tradition with humour and closes with the rhyme:

„Zerging’ das Heil’ge Römische Reich in Dunst, Uns bliebe doch die heil’ge deutsche Kunst.”
(if the Holy Roman Empire went up in smoke, we would still have holy German art.)

From: Richard Wagner,
Eine Mitteilung an meine Freunde (1851),
as published in the programme notes on the new production of “Die Meistersinger” in Dresden in 1950