A novel suggestion, maybe, but not as outlandish as it at first seems.

Talking to a non-(as opposed to anti-) Wagnerian friend recently, I was interested to hear about this work's many objectionable features.  These aren't the commonly cited ones (it's too long, David's 'catalogue' aria is a pointless piece of indulgence and it ends with a proto-Nazi paen), but have more to do with the character of Hans Sachs. I've heard Sachs referred to as 'Wagner's only likeable character' (?!) but the more one analyses his behaviour, the harder it is to find him wholly sympathetic: he beats his harmless apprentice when he gets in a temper, he rather nastily connives at Beckmesser's undoing and his two 'big' spiels reveal him to be somewhat above it all.  Certainly, we can admire him for refusing to take advantage of Eva, but is he really the great man Wagner seems  to want us to see him as?

Even more problematically, there is Beckmesser: hardly a villain (he doesn't really do anything WRONG during the course of the drama), Wagner seems determined to rub his undeserving face in the dirt at every opportunity. This points to one of the (to me) most fascinating aspects of Wagner's personality: for all his genius, he suffered from an essential smallness of character - to the point that he would go to great lengths to portray his 'enemy' Eduard Hanslik as caricature of provincial authority.  Beckmesser gets probably the most horrible come-uppance of any character in Wagner (bear in mind, this is a recognisable world we're talking about and not some realm of fantasy).  Unsurprising then that, for many, his downfalls leaves a sour taste in the mouth. 

As I've said, these are my friends views rather than mine, but having mulled them over, I can't help but feel he's made some good points. 

I'd be interested to know what others think? Does the 'means-spirited' of Die Meistersinger spoil its sublime music and overshadow its more uplifting moments?

Hans Sachs can certainly seem to be quite pleased with himself.  I think the best performances of the role are those that don't gloss the faults and seek to show that there is more to this character than general-purpose goodwill - Gwynne Howell's performances at the ENO were particularly good in this respect, bringing out a darker, lonely and slightly depressive side to the character that made him more human (there was real anger in his Act 3 outburst after Walther completes his Meisterlied to Eva, and that anger did not seem to well up from nowhere for once).

I don't think the two big scenes do reveal Sachs to be above it all - reflective and melancholy, perhaps, but both seem to me to be full of engagement.  In the first, Sachs is reflecting on the futility of words - and yet describing how Walther's song has crept behind his defences, reinforcing his sense of the importance of art while reinforcing his sense that he had been left behind by this new music.  It's a meditation of a man in middle age contemplating the passage of life, and as such it is extremely moving.  The second builds on those themes; the folly and pointlessness of what is happening around him, and the fury that took control of solid, bourgeois Nurnberg on the previous night.  It ends with a determination to take control as far as he can of events - in other words, he decides to rouse himself from melancholy and engage.  I think the work is uplifting because Sachs is never really that far from the edge of the abyss himself; he knows, in a very Schopenhauerian way, all about the sadness and transitoriness of life.

Beckmesser: part of the question here is the extent to which Beckmesser is the architect of his own misfortune.  Beckmesser is not wicked, or malicious; he just has no self-awareness.  Beckmesser is humiliated in public in the end, and probably didn't deserve it - he certainly deserves the audience's pity, but then lack of self-awareness has been one of the staples of comedy for centuries.  Is he any more badly treated than the Rev Collins?

As far as beating David is concerned, I'm afraid an apprentice in medieval societies was little more than a chattel and beating was rife.

(Incidentally the real Hans Sachs was only a widower for a short period - he was widowed in 1560 at the age of 64, but within a year was married again, to a much younger widow)

I'd place Tannhauser in the 'qualified failure' category: the Venusberg music, though splendid, has little sensuality and the drama goes to sleep in Act 2.  Things pick up at the end of Act 3 and finale, when done properly (as on the Solti recording) can be very moving.  But I think Michael Tanner had a point when he said the opera could often seem 'Victorian, in the worst sense of that word'.

Fair point indeed - although I suppose I approach that opera as being a kind of Germanicisation of the bel canto tradition, fused with a certain amount of Hummel    (BTW, the vocal score - which has been out-of-print for several years - is now availabe to download from IMSLP, although it's a chunky-sized file).  As I am fond of pointing out, the young Wagner subsidised his student years working for a music publisher - making the piano-score arrangements of Bellini and Donizetti operas.   And at least DAS LIEBESVERBOT is about real people - without any Monty Python knights, dragons, dwarves, etc

Although I have a sneaking regard for the RING operas, TRISTAN etc (I have a cyclic relationship with Wagner's music, with peaks and troughs...  currently I am in an ambivalent mood about it, although at other times I listen to nothing else) I still regret that no other German composers of much note (read as "excluding Nikolai and Lortzing") developed the Singspiel or "Romantic" opera into a fully-fledged Romantic form in parallel with Wagner's supernatural fantasy-world.   There was a lot which might have been done - RIENZI (my favourite of the Wagner operas) failed to bear fruit.   Returning to the MEISTERSINGER topic,  I suppose it's this element of "interpersonal relationships" - which lies at the heart of the Italian repertoire of the same era - which remains the undeveloped aspect of Wagner's works.  When it does (on rare occasion) rise to foreground,  it inspires the greatest moments in Wagner's output (second half of VALKYRIE Act III).   However, I think most of the reason I can't get on with MEISTERSINGER is that I find Sachs a tedious self-opinionated misanthrope,  who would be the Pub Bore in works written by anyone except RW.   Pass those same character traits to Verdi - and he makes the same chap into Dr Caius