Franz Schmidt’s Fredigundis remains best known for having been an abject failure, its 1922 premiere in Berlin followed by three Vienna performances in 1924 with no further staging in the century since. Drawing ‘freely’ upon the conjectural life of the sixth-century Merovingian queen-consort, Felix Dahn’s novel added a liberal dose of sensationalism that resulted in her being a femme fatale of the most pernicious kind. Having long ago burnt his fingers on the related story of Guntram, Strauss was sympathetic but also aware of a disaster in the making.

Conversely its libretto, by the respected authors Bruno Warden and Ignaz Welleminsky, does exclude any superfluous narrative to focus on the eponymous anti-heroine and her three male protagonists. Martin Egel summons a resolute showing as the king Chilperich, who blithely overlooks the convenient death of his first wife; Werner Hollweg is commendably ardent as the knight Landerich, latterly the bishop Praetexatus – his knowledge of her actions coloured by similar infatuation; and Reid Bunger brings tangible implacability to his father, the duke Drakolen, who quickly has her measure only to undergo severe humiliation before gaining a pyrrhic victory. Dunja Vejzović is magnetic as Fredigundis, on stage for most of the opera while taking the various attributes of minx, dominatrix and necromancer firmly in her stride.

Ernest Märzendorfer secures a convincing response from his Vienna Radio forces, bringing gravitas to a Prelude whose Meistersinger-like grandeur yields a nexus of motifs developed extensively; not least those interludes in the second and third acts that are among the opera’s high points. This new Orfeo transfer features decent sound and informative annotations; the conductor and three of the cast may now be deceased but what, almost 45 years on, remains the only complete account in modern times at least gives this flawed opera a fighting chance.