SALZBURG, Austria — The Salzburg Festival is celebrating Wagner’s 200th birthday with a fresh, charming and perceptive new production of “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg,” which opened here at the Grosses Festspielhaus on Friday.
The conductor Daniele Gatti, who won many new admirers for his performances of Wagner’s “Parsifal” at the Metropolitan Opera last season, drew a full-bodied and intriguingly intense performance of this composer’s sunniest score from the great Vienna Philharmonic. The cast over all was admirable, especially the distinguished German baritone Michael Volle, who brought the requisite gravitas and poignant vulnerability to his portrayal of the wise widower Hans Sachs, a shoemaker and the most beloved member of the guild of master singers in the medieval German city of Nürnberg, where the story is set.
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