Roedder—“Die Meistersinger von Numberg.” 
107 
A word will have to suffice for Eva, this truly winsome and be¬ 
witching lineal descendant of our general mother in paradise, and 
first cousin to Julia Capulet in her frankness and outspokenness 
in love as well as her astounding daring in taking her fate in her 
own hands, irrespective of the desire of her beloved father. She 
is especially engaging in the manner in which she tries to draw out 
her father and her old friend Hans Sachs concerning Walter von 
Stolzing’s success in the singing test in St. Catherine’s Church, 
in her playfully disguised apprehension that Sachs might enter 
the fateful singing contest on St. John’s Day, in her pouting when 
she misunderstands Sachs’s subtle irony as he refers to the other 
mastersingers ’ feeling of inferiority towards Walter, and in her 
complaint about all the trouble she has with the men folk when 
Walter is about to rush upon Beckmesser in front of Pogner’s 
house. She becomes a pathetic figure in the moment when the 
realization of Sachs’s true feelings for her and his suppressed 
grief overwhelms her, and yet how engagingly natural is her re¬ 
turn to the sun of her happiness in Walter’s presence immediately 
thereafter. Eva is altogether one of the most fascinating youth¬ 
ful figures in all operatic literature. 
On Magdalene, her confidante, David’s sweetheart, and on David 
we need not dwell. Wagner avoided the pitfall of making these 
two characters mere repetitions of types, and provided them with 
sufficient individuality to impress them on the spectator’s memory 
as beings of flesh and blood. 
The mastersingers as a class are excellently described by Kreh- 
biel, 1. c., p. 92f., where he sets forth the two melodies that char¬ 
acterize them throughout the comedy: 
4 ‘Note that as the mastersingers belonged to the solid burghers 
of old Nuremberg—a little vain, as was to be expected in the up¬ 
holders of an institution of great antiquity and glorious traditions; 
staid, dignified, and complacent, as became the free citizens of a 
free imperial city, whose stout walls sheltered the best in art and 
science that Germany could boast—so these two melodies are 
strong, simple tunes; sequences of the intervals of the simple dia¬ 
tonic scale; strongly and simply harmonized; square-cut in rhythm; 
firm and dignified, if a trifle pompous, in their stride.” \ 
The musical characterization of the mastersingers alone would 
suffice to convince any one that in the figure of Beckmesser Wag¬ 
ner did not mean to put on his feet the typical mastersinger, even 
if we forgot for a moment that Hans Sachs is a mastersinger as 
