In many ways as conventional as the contemporary studio films of Freischütz and Zar und Zimmermann (reviewed below), this setting of Wagner’s comedy benefits from the hand of experienced theatre director Leopold Lindtberg. The arguments of the Masters around Walther’s “new” song in Act 1, and the progress towards the nocturnal “cudgeling scene” at the climax of Act 2 are laid out with unusual clarity. The Act 3 “festival meadow” though, money obviously being short, is a cramped mess with only cunning camera angles to suggest the presence of a large crowd on the Wieland Wagner-like wooden rostra. This economy extends itself to the music too, with a nasty cut jumping us straight from the middle of the dances to the peoples’ acclamation of Sachs.

By the standards of Rolf Liebermann’s Hamburg the cast is only so-so. Giorgio Tozzi is a splendid Sachs, younger (hence more attractive to Eva) than usual, with a real sense of fun and an effortless grasp of both text and tessitura. His colleagues are pure of voice but rather dull – the relationship between this Eva and Walther is cosy from the word go. Blankenheim acts the hapless town clerk with credible understatement but sounds, at this recording date, pushed by any high-lying phrases. No one, Tozzi apart, seizes the comic opportunities their stage director has given them. As elsewhere in this film series, Ludwig and his orchestra (in full view during the Act 1 and 3 preludes) provide efficient rather than thrilling support. Sound and visual restoration are good.

Tozzi’s Sachs is collectable, and the ground production intelligent, but as a choice for home viewing this pales beside the subtleties of the Götz Friedrich/Frühbeck de Burgos staging (ArtHaus Musik, 4/01) with its pairing of Wolfgang Brendel and the late Gösta Winbergh.