Talk about out of season. Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg takes place over about 48 hours either side of Midsummer Night, June 23. Never mind! For dyed-in-the-wool aficionados, the time’s always right for Richard Wagner’s monumental bourgeois comedy. The current production at Staatsoper, directed by Andrea Moses, has pleased the public greatly since 2015 and can hardly fail to do so again. The action has been updated from the Middle Ages to the present, apparently to revealing effect. The conductor Alexander Soddy, whose star has been skyrocketing of late, has taken over from Daniel Barenboim, who led the premiere. Christof Fischesser sings Pogner, the goldsmith, who offers his daughter Eva (Hanna-Elisabeth Müller) as grand prize in a sing-off. Klaus Florian Vogt is the upstart rockstar who enters the competition at the last minute, to the chagrin of the persnickety pedant Sixtus Beckmesser (Johannes Martin Kränzle), who thinks he has her in the bag. Christopher Maltman is Hans Sachs, the beloved cobbler-poet who makes the odds all even. It’s a mammoth role, conceived for the kind of voice and personality that can handle the chief god Wotan in the “Ring” cycle, but requiring a very different twinkle in his eye. —Matthew Gurewitsch