Operas Every Child Should Know

"David here shall tell you, Sir Walther. Here, David, help this brave gentleman all that you can. I wish it." She looked admonishment at him.

"Tell him all the plan of the Mastersingers and how they will expect him to conduct himself in the competition. Come, Eva." But Eva still lingered. In came two other apprentices, bearing benches. Walther watched those formidable preparations with uneasiness, walking up and down the church in dismay.

"Good heaven! I am sure I cannot sing. I have never tried to sing. I shall never be able to sing. Yet I must sing. What in the world can a man do, in such a fix?"

"Well, well, do the best you can. David will instruct you, Sir Knight," said Magdalene, and she hurried away with Eva, leaving the poor knight alone with the apprentices.

These chaps came in thick and fast, bringing benches for the Mastersingers to sit upon, and arranging everything in the church for the trial of song. David kept watching Walther, who had flung himself into a great ecclesiastical chair, and sat there brooding. After observing him in silence for a time, David shouted:

"Begin," Walther started.

"What for?"

"Begin!"

"What for?"

"What for? – why that is how the Marker calls. You must then at once go and sing. Don't you understand anything about this business?" he asked in amazement.

"Who is the Marker?" Poor Walther asked, more and more bewildered.

"Were you never before at a singing trial?"

"Not where the judges were craftsmen," Walther answered. He was quite certain if he knew anything about music, it could not be the kind that shoe-makers, and boiler makers, and the like were acquainted with.

"Are you a poet?"

"I wish I were," Walther sighed dejectedly.

"Are you then a 'scholar'?"

"Lord, no, I think not – I don't know. What is a 'scholar?"

"Don't know that, and yet expect to become a Mastersinger!" David cried, in amazement. "Well, now, let me tell you, Sir Knight, no one gets to be a Mastersinger in a minute! For a full year, Hans Sachs, our greatest master, has been teaching me the art, and I am not yet even a 'scholar.'"

Shoemaker's craft and Poet's art,
Daily I learn by the heart.
First, all the leather smooth I hammer,
Consonants then, and vowels I stammer.
Next must the thread be stiff with wax,
Then I must learn it rhymes with Sachs.

David continued to tell of the difficulties of learning from a cobbler how to become a Mastersinger, though the cobbler was one himself. By the time David had finished telling Walther about the process of shoemaking and music making, Walther threw up his hands in despair.

"Defend me from learning – the cobbler's trade," he cried, half humorously, yet troubled.

"You must learn:

The shortened, long, and over-long tones;
The paper mode, the black-ink mode;
The scarlet, blue, and verdant tones;
The hawthorn bloom, strawhalm, fennel mode:
The tender, the dulcet, the rosy tone;
The passing passion, the forgotten tone;
The rosemary, wallflower mode;
The rainbow mode and the nightingale mode
The English tin, the cinnamon mode,
Fresh pomegranates, green linden-bloom mode;
The lonely gormandizer mode,
The skylark, the snail, the barking tone;
And the honey flower, the marjoram mode;
The lion's skin, true pelican mode,
The bright glittering thread mode."

"Dreadful, dreadful," cried poor Walther. "What an endless medley of tones!"

"Oh, those are only the titles; after that comes the singing – and it has to be according to rules, remember."

Walther groaned. David at once outlined some of the rules; they appeared quite hopeless.

"Why no one in the world could meet such demands, it is ridiculous."

"You had better not say so," David answered, significantly. "I want you to know that the great Mastersingers of Nuremberg run this thing; and it doesn't make any difference to anybody but you and Herr Pogner's daughter whether you approve or not." At the mention of Eva, Walther tried to control his feelings; he must try at least, the Lord help him – to come out somewhere in the midst of all that shoemaker's music of "modes" and "thread" and "buttons" and what-not!

By this time the apprentices had erected a small stage with a chair and a desk upon it and a blackboard behind, with a piece of chalk hanging from a long string upon the board, and all about that funny arrangement were black curtains which could be drawn close.

"The Marker will let seven faults slip by," David explained to the knight; but if he finds more than seven it is all over for the candidate.

So God save you from disaster,
May you, to-day, be a master,

he wound up poetically.

Having finished their preparations, the apprentices began to dance about in a ring. In the midst of the jollity in came Pogner from the sacristy; also, Beckmesser, who was the town clerk and a singer who believed in himself.

David took his place at the sacristy door, to let in the other Mastersingers, and the other apprentices stood waiting before the bench at back. Walther, sick to death through being teased by the apprentices, had sat himself down on the very front seat, and there, before all, was the dreaded Marker's seat. There was the great "singing chair" – where the candidate was to sit while under trial. Pogner stood talking with the town clerk, Beckmesser.

"Herr Pogner," the latter was saying, "I know what this prize is to be, and I love your daughter with all my soul." Beckmesser, who was a rather old and absurd chap, made a sentimental and dramatic gesture. "I want to beg of you if there is any preference shown, that it be shown to me."

"I cannot say there will be any favours shown, Beckmesser, but my plan should serve you well. Eva is to go to the best singer – in case of course that she loves him. She shall not be forced; and who sings so well as you?"

"Yet, in certain respects, I am weak," Beckmesser murmured. "I should like those weak points to be passed over." He was a foxy old fellow, far too old for the lovely Eva, and he was quite willing to take an unfair advantage of his brother singers.

Walther then jumped from his chair and went to Pogner.

"Herr Pogner, may I have speech with you?" he asked.

"What, Sir Walther seeks me in singing school?"