Overview

• Matthias Davids, head of the musical division at Landestheater Linz, makes his Bayreuth debut by directing Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the festival’s opening.
• He plans to foreground the opera’s inherent comic form rather than incorporate its extensive reception history into the staging.
• His lighthearted vision diverges from Barrie Kosky’s 2024 production, which evoked the Nuremberg Trials to confront Wagner’s antisemitism.
• Davids cautions that heavy directorial concepts risk rendering classic works unrecognizable to contemporary audiences.
• He argues that opera has missed opportunities by seldom commissioning fresh, accessible works compared with the musical genre.