‘Honour your German masters.” The advice of the charismatic cobbler-poet Hans Sachs to the people of Nuremberg, in the closing scene of Wagner’s great comic opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, might justly have been offered in quite other circumstances over the weekend. But it would not surely have been as well received by England’s shamed World Cup squad as it was by the joyful Nurembergers — and by the full house watching them in Wales Millennium Centre on Saturday.

Art and not football is, of course, the subject of Sachs’s address wherein is spelt out his — and Wagner’s — mission to protect German culture from destructive outside influences. The composer, in fact, was all for jacking this ‘sermon’ and ending the opera with the climactic performance and jubilant reception of the Prize Song. A deal of opprobrium might have been saved him had he not submitted to his wife Cosima in the matter.

Allusions to Nazi politics, which for so long bedevilled productions of Hitler’s favourite opera, are gratifyingly absent from the triumphant account of the work from Welsh National Opera under director Richard Jones and conductor Lothar Koenigs. Instead, we can enjoy, properly mined, its rich vein of comedy — especially in the antics of David (Andrew Tortise) and his fellow apprentices — while savouring the uplifting emotions stirred by our lengthy encounter with opera’s greatest humanist.

It was said that in Verdi’s Falstaff Bryn Terfel had found the role he was born to play; in Sachs, surely, he is inhabiting one even better suited to his exuberant skills as a singer and actor. This wise and wonderful man — who is willing to renounce his claim on the lovely Eva (Amanda Roocroft) to secure the happiness of her eager young wooer Walther (Raymond Very) — can hardly have been better portrayed.

Sachs's virtues — not least his easy flexibility — shine out when set against the constrictive, pettifogging, rule-enforcing approach to life of the Town Clerk, Beckmesser. He, too, is superbly presented in a richly comic performance by Oxford’s Christopher Purves —another fine Falstaff (last year at Glyndebourne) as it happens. Highlights of his performance occur during Sachs’s marking (by blows of a tack-hammer on his last) of his inept planned serenade to Eva, and the unseemly brawl that follows when the jealous David misinterprets the song, when eventually delivered, as a ‘move’ on his beloved Magdalene (Anna Burford). While this good-looking production (designer Paul Steinberg) remains always loyal to Wagner’s detailed instructions over the action, Richard Jones extends these just a little in permitting Beckmesser to show one of the consequences of the riot — a livid bruise on his bare bottom.

Musically, this long (six-hour) performance is of the highest standard, with all involved rising to the demands of what is recognisably one of the year’s biggest events in opera. The Act III quintet involving Walther, Sachs, Eva, David and Magdalene is breath-taking in its beauty. Fine work from WNO’s justly famed chorus — here expanded — and superb orchestra contributes hugely to this night of faultless art.

n There are further performances in Cardiff on Saturday and at Birmingham Hippodrome on July 6 and 10. The opera can also be heard live from the Royal Albert Hall during the BBC Proms on Saturday, July 17.