This DVD is aimed at a specialist audience. Recorded in 1963, it is a black-and-white Austrian television broadcast of Verdi’s opera, performed in the studio in German translation. The picture has been scrubbed up to look remarkably clean for its age, but the orchestra sounds muffled – not surprisingly, as it was actually playing in Vienna Musikverein premises and being relayed to the television studio by cable. The benefit is that the singers could sing live rather than mime, and they all make sure they put across the text clearly. A German-speaking viewer can easily follow every word.

Hellmuth Matiasek’s studio production is as traditional as they come. Set firmly in the Tudor period, it features a nicely realistic old Garter Inn and a garden for the Fords’ house straight out of Stratford-upon-Avon, while the merry-making around Herne’s Oak becomes a riot of period camp – the “Tudor” hats and hairstyles could only be the 1960s. Every character is true to the Shakespeare original, though some of the acting looks unsubtle in close-up today. Nannetta and Fenton might well regret smooching at each other so luridly and every raised comic eyebrow could have been seen a mile away.

The cast is a good one, but not exceptional. Otto Edelmann plays a blessedly unexaggerated Falstaff, first cousin to his Baron Ochs (preserved in Karajan’s recording), but does not always sing in tune. The other major names in the cast are Elisabeth Höngen as a not-too-plummy Mistress Quickly and Graziella Sciutti as a bright-voiced “Ännchen”. The others – including Melitta Muszely’s Alice Ford, Hans Günter Grimm’s Ford and Richard van Vrooman’s Fenton – are at least adequate, and Nello Santi conducts the Vienna Symphony Orchestra with an Italianate vigour that is the most Verdian aspect of the performance. As a historical document, this is probably as good as they come.