Zurich's version has the misfortune of arriving on the scene in the slipstream, just as of one of the recording industry's greatest DVD masterpieces has majestically roared past.
This new version isn't bad, though. The differences with New York are two-fold -- first in the characterizations offered by the soloists, secondly in the overall visual presentation. Whereas on both fronts New York's Metropolitan Opera on DGM is almost everywhere ideal, here the effect is patchy.
The heart of the matter is that in the Metropolitan Opera version time flew by; here it tends to drag. In the former, Ben Heppner and James King acted their parts with great conviction as well as singing to near-perfection, and they were supported by magnificent naturalistic sets.
In this Zurich version, Peter Seiffert and Jose van Dam (as Walther and a somewhat humorless Sachs), though vocally perfectly adequate, embody their roles less convincingly. Furthermore, they are poorly supported in act two by a bleakly symbolic set -- a pile of books to represent Sachs's workshop and study, with no hint of his being a cobbler, or of the summer morning outside.
The cast appears to sense this, and whereas in the New York production everyone seemed buoyant in the conviction that they were taking part in a masterly version that would go down in history, here the principals appear worried by the lack of support the sets and the director are giving them.
Even the act-two quintet, normally a fail-safe show-stopper, wholly lacks the entranced sublimity that Levine and his New York forces so memorably gave it.
Things pick up in the final act. Petra-Maria Schnitzer as Eva rises to the occasion, and the set designer finally gives up on his quasi-abstract principles and allows us a scenic tapestry backcloth plus classical Greek columns. The ballet is just about satisfactory, while Michael Volle's Beckmesser, previously far too ridiculous and lacking the psychological insights of New York's Thomas Allen, isn't humiliated, and the chorus acts and sings to good effect.
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