The first releases from the extensive TV archive of productions made during Rolf Liebermann’s Intendantship in Hamburg in the 1960s feature productions that, surprisingly, are cute, kitschy and seemingly untouched by the adventurous work elsewhere of Walter Felsenstein and Wieland Wagner. Such poverty of visual and dramatic imagination, together with the distracting contemporary belief in miming to a pre-recorded soundtrack, interferes with the high musical standards and committed individual performances on display.

They say that Lortzing does not travel (even in Germany his light operas play only to their own, unique audience) but this tale of mistaken identities about two Russians called Peter in a Dutch shipyard has the seamless inevitability of the best comedy, and a decidedly modern turn of phrase. “He could have told me he was a Tsar,” complains the young Lucia Popp’s nicely judged Marie, “and I’d have behaved quite differently.” Also from the top drawer, and caught at an early stage of their careers, are the “real” Peter of Raymond Wolansky (best known in the UK for the Frühbeck Carmina Burana), the normally serious Hans Sotin revelling in the slapstick of Mayor van Bett, Horst Wilhelm as the French Marquis, and a tiny role for Franz Grundheber. Charles Mackerras, a Hamburg regular in those days, conducts with, you won’t be surprised to hear, astonishing fluency.

The Weber performance at least lets you see archetypal bass villain Gottlob Frick and Ernst Kozub, the tenor who nearly recorded Siegfried for Solti, in a complete performance – although, close to, Frick is quite over-the-top in this very traditional production. With Saunders and Mathis (intelligently understated) as the ladies, and Krause and Blankenheim as relative walk-ons, the casting alone may tempt purchase. Sadly however, the effects in the Wolf’s Glen scene would have looked weak in the first run of Dr Who, and there’s little evidence of involving actor direction. Ludwig conducts with unobjectionable style. The DVD remasterings have been excellently done. The discs will please those who prefer souvenirs of important artists to intelligent music-theatre.