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Jessica Muirhead, Magnus Vigilius and The Royal Danish Opera Choir in The Master Singers of Nuremberg (Photo: Miklos Szabo)

The Royal Danish Opera has gone all-out for its new staging of Wagner’s epic comedy, marking twenty years since the opening of the new opera house on Copenhagen harbour. I don’t believe the building has hosted anything more impressive. Laurent Pelly’s production is theatrically joyous and unfailingly penetrating. It is delivered with delectable musicianship by an almost entirely Scandinavian (and mostly Danish) cast that links the old guard of Kasper Holten’s Ring - which helped inaugurate this building two decades ago - to a new generation that steps up with striking assurance. 

In Pelly’s hands - and those of Axel Kober in the pit - a verbose, 5-hour opera that can so easily run aground on its own depiction of pedantry seems to fly by in minutes. The staging may be predominantly dark. But it is illuminated by striking moments of theatre, propelled by impish charm and eddied by galvanizing currents of love - for fellow humans as well as for the traditions the story mocks. Love, in fact, is a central theme: Sachs overcoming his love for Eva; a community not so much reveling in its own isolationist pride as recognizing that love is art - and thus glimpsing a new future.

At the heart of all that is a Sachs from Johan Reuter that may not be towering - his generous voice has never been that - but is colossal in its warmth and humanity, as if taking its audience by the hand (‘Wahn! Wahn!’ is delivered in front of the set, directly at us). There is roundness in Reuter’s every vocal phrase and truth in his every gesture, particularly so in the devastating moment he pushes Eva out of his arms and into Walther’s, breaking down with emotion in the act. Magnus Vigilius - Copenhagen born-and-bred but rather an unknown quantity on this stage until now - sings a magnificent Walther, rooted in text yet always lyrical, his voice consistent in body and tone but lined with a determined streak. Pelly creates a force-field around him and Jessica Muirhead’s rapt, gorgeously sung Eva - in every way, a light among the dusty shadows.

Jacob Skov Andersen and Magnus Vigilius in The Master Singers of Nuremberg at the Royal Danish Opera (Photo: Miklos Szabo)

Supporting all this, meticulously detailed theatrics make an irrelevance of setting and underline Wagner’s entire point that traditional/contemporary is not an either/or (though for the record: period appears to be mid twentieth-century, with modish costumes by Pelly and Jean-Jacques Delmotte). The mastersingers themselves are the comedically decrepit subjects of a mobile oil painting, freezing now-and-then inside the gilt frame they prove so reluctant to move beyond the confines of. Their apprentices, in contrast, resemble a troupe of hyperactive acrobats who move and sing with uncanny precision (six of them, encouragingly, are drawn from the Royal Opera Academy). Tom Erik Lie is a magnetically entertaining Beckmesser; he combines outstanding comic timing (and nifty synergy with the score) with a depth of characterization whose neurosis carries yet more truth. Also ‘on loan’ from Oslo is Jens-Erik Aasbø as an ageing yet noble Pogner. 

In no other work would it be so gratifying to see the Royal Danish Opera’s senior singers ushering forth their younger counterparts. Hanne Fischer - a Rhinemaiden and a Norn in Holten’s Ring (in which Reuter sang Wotan and Donner) - is a touching, bright-eyed yet hesitant Magdalene. Jacob Skov Andersen, a young singer becoming a mightily useful part of this company, dispatches a high-energy coming-of-age portrayal of David that put me in mind of Nicky Spence at ENO in 2015.

Kober’s brisk, propulsive reading of the Prelude may ring alarm bells but there is no sense thereafter of suppleness sacrificed, with repartee crystal clear. If anything, that Prelude prefaces a production in which civic bustle is conjured-up thrillingly, much of it via the fertility and atmosphere of Caroline Ginet’s model-village cardboard houses - all torn-up during the Act II riot, naturally. Three-quarters through a heavy season the Royal Danish Orchestra can occasionally sound tired but is recognizably its über-resonant self, with particularly brilliant strings, and you couldn’t mark anything against the augmented chorus, which fills its performance with physical detail. In conclusion, a triumph - and quite a moment for this company, reclaiming its Wagnerian credentials at last.

Until 27 April kglteater.dk