Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg - Traditional vs Iconoclastic Stagings - a talk by Wagner Society President Esteban Insausti

ABOUT THE TALK

Esteban Insausti reprises his presentation given at the Meistersinger Symposium in Melbourne earlier this year. His paper has been updated and revised for the Sydney event to include some commentary on the new production that opened in Bayreuth recently.
In the talk Esteban gives historical context to the politics which accrued in and around Meistersinger, particularly in the post First World War period as Germany lurched from monarchy to democracy and into autocracy. The New Bayreuth reaction in 1956, perhaps iconoclastic, perhaps not, opened the scenographic and dramaturgical conversation that is still running today. A cycle of reaction, erasure, restoration, revisiting and renewal which runs parallel to contemporary political and societal “norms”.

ABOUT ESTEBAN INSAUSTI

Esteban is a practising architect with 40 years of experience. A graduate of the University of Sydney, he has worked on a range of typologies including theatres, public buildings & large commercial mixed-use developments in Australia and overseas.
After a solid decade of designing public buildings at the Government Architects Office he went commercial.
In Malaysia he planned & designed some impossible mixed-use developments in South-East Asia & Africa (Namibia). The Malaysian experience expanded his culinary taste (& girth) but also made him confront issues of colonialism (architectural and political) together with inequality. The South-East Asia financial crisis forced his return to Sydney where followed a time of architecture with a capital ‘A' as well as interesting commercial work for Westfield, Lend Lease & Frasers Property Australia.
On the cultural architecture side Esteban has designed the new High Commission in New Delhi, the Red Box in Leichhardt, the Children’s Theatre at Darling Harbour & the Telstra Auditorium at the corner of George and King Streets that nobody but the privileged few have seen & experienced (more inequality and access issues). The Telstra Auditorium is a gorgeous project.
He has a Master of Arts in Theatre Studies from the UNSW, compensation for foolishly passing up the opportunity to study at NIDA when accepted for the Set Design course in 1983. He was subsequently rejected by NIDA in 2016 after a magnificent return audition for the Director’s Course, leaving the theatre field with a decades long one-all draw.
Whilst not a musician, music is central to his cultural activities. Esteban takes great pride in supporting & promoting the performance of music and opera, a pursuit that has its origins during his time on the ABC Youth Concerts Committee back in the 1970s. Esteban is the tenth & current President of the Wagner Society in NSW.

The talk will be preceeded by a screening of

Act 1 of Glyndebourne Opera’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg [2011]

ABOUT THE FILM

Glyndebourne Opera and director Sir David McVicar had a huge success with this beautiful production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in 2011. Designer Vicki Mortimer updated the setting to Wagner’s own time, creating a naturalistic vision of a German town. The set design was described as “ingenious” and contributed to a production praised for its style, intelligence, and insight. Vladimir Jurowski (‘a Wagnerian of considerable stature’) conducts an ‘exhilarating’ London Philharmonic Orchestra and the largest ever Glyndebourne Chorus in ‘an account to treasure’ of Wagner’s rich score that ‘nicely judges the work’s ebb and flow’. The cast is led by the ‘supremely elegant singing’ of an ‘extraordinary’ Gerald Finley – a mesmerising mixture of ‘sadness, anger, nobility, passion and resignation’ as cobbler Hans Sachs. He’s matched by Johannes Martin Kränzle – ‘very much Finley’s equal in subtlety’ – as Beckmesser. Marco Jentzsch is a passionate Walther and Anna Gabler a gentle Eva, with Topi Lehtipuu as Sachs’ high-spirited apprentice David and Alastair Miles as ‘wonderfully lugubrious’ Pogner.