With over 350 performances across Europe in the first half of the 1920s, Der Schatzgräber (‘The Treasure Seeker’) was not only Schreker’s greatest success as a composer but also one of the most popular operas of the Weimar Republic. However, the changing cultural climate of the second half of the decade saw Schreker’s music falling out of favour, and the subsequent ban on the music of Jewish composers by the Nazis in 1933 as well as Schreker’s death the following year resulted in the work not being fully staged again until 1988.

Set in medieval times, with a libretto written by Schreker himself, the intriguing plot of Der Schatzgräber concerns Elis, a wandering minstrel with a magic lute that detects treasure, and Els, the murderous daughter of an innkeeper who has acquired stolen jewellery that endows the wearer with everlasting youth and beauty. Although the text of the extended love duet between Elis and Els that forms much of the third act is largely Wagnerian pastiche, the work’s remarkable melodic beauty, luminous scoring and emotional intensity are vintage Schreker and go a long way to explaining the opera’s popularity in the years following its premiere.

In Christof Loy’s production, a dark-walled banqueting hall provides the backdrop for the opera’s various settings. Characters from different scenes, dressed in 20th-century clothes, rarely leave the stage, instead providing silent commentary on the action through carefully choreographed movements and facial expressions. Combined with Götz Filenius’s alert video direction, the result has a compelling dramatic narrative.

Elisabet Strid is superb in the psychologically complex role of Els, both in terms of acting and vocal artistry. Her singing of Els’s lullaby at the start of Act 3 is especially sensitive and moving. Daniel Johansson brings amplitude, warmth and lyricism to his performance of Elis and Michael Laurenz’s portrayal of the Fool is both witty and sympathetic. The opera’s secondary roles also receive consistently fine performances.

Marc Albrecht’s conducting is even more deeply felt than on his 2012 audio recording from the Netherlands Opera (Challenge Classics, 4/14), itself an advance on the 1989 Hamburg Opera version conducted by Gerd Albrecht (Capriccio, 5/90). As in the Netherlands, the opera is presented complete apart from a cut of 55 bars starting at bar 214 in Act 2, amounting to about three minutes of music. By contrast, the Capriccio recording features cuts of around 12 minutes spread across all four acts. Both the orchestral playing and choral singing in Berlin are beautifully prepared and expressive, and the sound is wide-ranging and superbly balanced. This is the first recording of Der Schatzgräber to receive a commercial release in video format and I cannot recommend it too highly.