The vorspiel is a vivid delineation of mediaeval German life, full of festive pomp, stirring action, glowing passion, and exuberant humor.  The first act opens in the Church of St. Katherine, at Nuremberg, with the singing of a chorale to organ accompaniment.  During the chorale and its interludes a quiet love-scene is being enacted between Eva, daughter of the wealthy goldsmith Veit Pogner, and Walter von Stolzing, a noble young knight.  The attraction is mutual.  Eva is ready to become his bride, but it is necessary that her husband should be a mastersinger.  Rather than give up the hand of the fair Eva, Walter, short as the time is, determines to master the precepts and enter the lists.  As Eva and her attendant, Magdalena, leave the church, the apprentices enter to arrange for the trial, among them David, the friskiest of them all, who is in love with Magdalena.  He volunteers to give Walter some instructions, but they do not avail him much in the end, for the lesson is sadly disturbed by the gibes of the boys, in a scene full of musical humor.  At last Pogner and Beckmesser, the marker, who is also a competitor for Eva’s hand, enter from the sacristy.  After a long dialogue between them the other masters assemble, Hans Sachs, the cobbler-bard, coming in last.  After calling the roll, the ceremonies open with a pompous address by Pogner ("Das schoene Fest, Johannis-Tag"), in which he promises the hand of Eva, “with my gold and goods beside,” to the successful singer on the morrow, which is John the Baptist’s Day.  After a long parley among the gossiping masters, Pogner introduces Walter as a candidate for election.  He sings a charming song ("So rief der Lenz in den Wald"), and as he sings, the marker, concealed behind a screen, is heard scoring down the faults.  When he displays the slate it is found to be covered with them.  The masters declare him outsung and rejected, but Hans Sachs befriends him, and demands he shall have a chance for the prize.

The second act discloses Pogner’s house and Sachs’s shop.  The apprentices are busy putting up the shutters, and are singing as they work.  Walter meets Eva and plots an elopement with her, but Sachs prevents them from carrying out their rash plan.  Meanwhile Beckmesser makes his appearance with his lute for the purpose of serenading Eva and rehearsing the song he is to sing for the prize on the morrow.  As he is about to sing, Sachs breaks out into a rollicking folk-song ("Jerum, jerum, halla, halla, he!"), in which he sings of Mother Eve and the troubles she had after she left Paradise, for want of shoes.  At last he allows Beckmesser a hearing, provided he will permit him to mark the faults with his hammer upon the shoe he is making.  The marker consents, and sings his song, “Den Tag seh’ ich erscheinen,” accompanied with excruciating roulades of the old-fashioned conventional sort; but Sachs knocks so often that his shoe is finished long before Beckmesser’s song.  This is his first humiliation.  Before the act finishes he is plunged into still further trouble, for David suspects him of designs upon Magdalena, and a general quarrel ensues.