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Midsummer's eve in Nuremberg and the real-life cobbler-poet Hans Sachs and the guild of mastersingers are pursuing their craft of poetry and music according to traditions and rules. A goldsmith's daughter, Eva, and a knight, Walther von Stolzing, fall in love, but Eva's father has promised her to the winner in the forthcoming song contest. Under the wise tuition of Sachs, can Walther learn the mastersinger's art in time to win Eva’s hand and see off a challenge from the foolish town clerk Beckmesser? Richard Wagner’s only comic opera had a long gestation. Summer 1845: drawing on the History of German Literature as well as the biography of poet and shoemaker Hans Sachs, the composer sketches out ideas for a satirical counterpart to Tannhäuser. Autumn 1861: Wagner writes to his publisher that he intends to cheer himself up with ‘something lighter’ and begins composing Die Meistersinger, which he would not complete until six years later. With a sense of self-derision with which he is
