Antonio Pappano’s view of Sachs’ final speech, quoted in the New York Times Oct 25, 2021:
“The whole colour of the piece changes for two pages; it’s weird; it becomes melodramatic, even, so you can tell Wagner’s heart was not in it, really. No, you know what it sounds like? It sounds like Italian opera. It sounds as if it’s not to be given undue weight. That’s my feeling.”
Beware! Evil tricks threaten us:
if the German people and kingdom should one day decay,
under a false, foreign rule
soon no prince would understand his people;
and foreign mists with foreign vanities
they would plant in our German land;
what is German and true none would know,
if it did not live in the honour of German Masters.
Listen to James Rutherford singing this section at the San Francisco Opera in 2015, conducted by Sir Mark Elder. The pages shown above start at 2’30” on the recording:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SCynhX_gVE
Pappano gives short lecture with musical illustrations on the opera, at the ROH in 2011:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDs3JJ1gpUU
The Bayreuth production, directed by Barrie Kosky, is available here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KRj8GKGocs
A review, published in Wagner News, July 2015:
