Necessity is the mother of invention. In the spring of 2021, Christof Loy was supposed to direct a new production of Giordano’s Fedora at Oper Frankfurt but a further covid lockdown and strict health restrictions led to its suspension. Ingeniously, Loy used Herbert Murauer’s duck-egg blue, flock-wallpapered set to stage an intimate evening of two dozen Tchaikovsky songs instead. It was performed by five singers in an empty opera house and was live-streamed, now issued on DVD and Blu‑ray.

Under the title of Tchaikovsky’s most famous romance, ‘None but the Lonely Heart’, these songs of love and loss, loneliness and isolation struck a bittersweet chord. I found the whole thing tremendously moving, one of the very best things any opera company created during the pandemic. Three years on, I am very happy to be reacquainted with Loy’s production, which I still find remarkably touching.

This is no formal Liederabend but a staged drama, contained – as is Loy’s usual way – within a single room, with pianist Mariusz Kłubczuk on stage throughout. It’s interesting to read the interview with the director in the booklet note, where he reveals that he had been toying with the idea of staging Tchaikovsky’s songs since working on Eugene Onegin. Loy provides a synopsis of sorts. Baritone Vladislav Sulimsky is the central figure (all the characters are unnamed) who, we are told, is at a crossroads in his life. Tenor Andrea Carè and baritone Mikołaj Trąbka are his friends, possibly younger incarnations of himself. Two women – soprano Olesya Golovneva and Kelsey Lauritano – are his wife, to whom he has never fully opened up, and a distant lover.

Sulimsky’s character, seeming to reflect on these relationships, seems resigned. There are recriminations, ardent appeals and touching reconciliations. Golovneva’s character is a dancer in a Giselle-style tutu, going up en pointe (as she did in Loy’s Rusalka staging in Madrid). At the midpoint, a partition in the room opens up to reveal a painted landscape; we hear the Adagio cantabile from the Souvenir de Florence but only see the music stands and abandoned instruments, a poignant reminder of the enforced isolation during successive lockdowns. This sextet evokes strong responses in the five characters, followed by a vocal quartet that Tchaikovsky composed on Mozart’s Fantasia in C minor, K475. With the performance ending with Sulimsky draining a glass of water, Loy introduces a possible reference to Tchaikovsky’s own death.

Loy’s choice of songs encompasses the familiar and the rarely heard. Of the established singers, Golovneva is very fine, her soprano racked with emotion, her acting expressive. Sulimsky broods darkly, his inky baritone suited to the gloomier songs, and Carè sings with bright tone, especially in ‘The Corals’. The other roles are taken by young ensemble members; Trąbka's lighter baritone contrasts nicely with Sulimsky’s, while Lauritano is already an accomplished mezzo, delivering the famous title-song wonderfully, dripping with emotion. Kłubczuk accompanies them attentively, and shines in Mikhail Pletnev’s dazzling transcription of the finale from The Sleeping Beauty, a rare light-hearted moment.

Loy’s Fedora did finally take to the Frankfurt stage in the spring of 2022, but this film remains as a memento of a most touching endeavour.