***** Wagner is not often associated with levity, but Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg remains his great comic outlier: a sprawling, richly textured celebration of art, tradition, and renewal. That didn’t stop director Matthias Davids from turning it into something resembling an agricultural show —complete with hay bales, Merkel look-alikes, and, in Act III, a giant … Continue reading A laughing cow and glorious musicianship, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Bayreuth Festival