As part of its summer carnival, a provincial town holds an annual singing competition on the riverside meadow that serves as the fairground. What could be more homely? Only Richard Wagner could turn this into a disquisition on the role of culture, the shock of the new, the pleasures and pains of love, national identity and history: in the end, The Mastersingers is a love song addressed to the Germany of sturdy and poetic virtues.It bursts with lyricism, charm, humour and tenderness, and ENO’s performance highlights these at the unmourned cost of the opera’s more tendentious side. And in the great, human role of Hans Sachs, bass-baritone Iain Paterson is immensely attractive and strong.The story is seen through the eyes of the kind-hearted but gloomy cobbler-poet Sachs. In sixt