In the astonishingly ill­informed booklet accompanying this release (Stravinsky’s father was not ‘leading bass player at the Marinski [sic] Theatre’; Stravinsky did not ‘prefer to follow family tradition and start a career as a lawyer’)‚ the designs for this Salzburg Festival production‚ by Jörg Immendorf‚ are said to be ‘inspired by the engravings of William Hogarth’. ‘Inspired’‚ I suppose‚ in the sense that they use contemporary imagery in something faintly resembling the way that Hogarth used the images of his time. But paint­stained jeans‚ tee­shirt‚ tattoo and lank hair (this Tom Rakewell’s invariable get­up) are not our century’s equivalent of whatever Tom might be wearing in a ‘period’ production. They immediately stamp him as laddish at best‚ loutish at worst (his sneering attitude to Trulove) and they do no favours to Jerry Hadley. In splendid if rather too full voice throughout and acting with real conviction‚ he is nevertheless unmistakably in well­preserved middle age; athletic capering (he does a lot of this) cannot hide it. Still less forgiveably‚ Dawn Upshaw’s almost total absence of make­up and her curly blonde wig make her look older than she is‚ and her (also invariable) costume – a night­dress tastefully printed with a skull and crossbones design – sends out wrong messages from the rise of the curtain. But her unpainted face soon seems a comparative blessing. Nick Shadow has a checker­board painted on one side of his‚ a black heart on the other and sufficient other disfigurements to disguise the late and lamented Monte Pederson entirely. As well as black make­up Mother Goose has a black slip emblazoned with sexual graffiti‚ Baba the Turk is not only bearded but old‚ her bulky figure caricatured with short pink skirt‚ leather jacket and joky tee­shirt. It is a relief to encounter Barry Banks’s Sellem‚ his face painted white but able to act likeably and exuberantly through this mask. I could go on: about the cardboard aeroplane in which Shadow arrives (it stays on stage for the rest of the performance)‚ about the feeble jokes (the stones­into­bread machine is a cannon‚ firing loaves first at the unfortunate Jane Henschel‚ then at the conductor) and the crudely drawn sets. Does any of this affect the musical performance? In Hadley’s case yes: he is so busy acting out the director’s interpretation of his role that Stravinsky’s notes are quite often distorted; there are a number of unnecessary pauses to allow for elaborate business. Otherwise everyone sings very well and Sylvain Cambreling ensures that nothing of the grubbiness on stage pollutes his lucid and elegant music­making. But to recommend a DVD for its sound only (and that disfigured by a lot of stage noise) seems pointless. I know of no alternative on DVD at the moment; the only current VHS version (NVC‚ 2/99) is pointlessly cut and very tendentiously directed (Baba the Turk is a man). We must hope that the Glyndebourne production in David Hockney’s sets‚ once available from Carlton on VHS‚ will soon reappear in DVD format.