Der Prinz von Homburg (1958-60) was composed at a time of burgeoning acclaim for Henze. The librettist, Ingeborg Bachmann, fashioned a splendid reduction of Kleist’s famous drama of the dreamy aristocrat who, distracted by love into disobeying orders in battle, is given the choice of escaping condemnation if he feels the verdict unjust. Only when he accepts the inevitability of his sentence, and walks out to face execution, is he pardoned.

Henze’s crisp and vital music is a remarkable, natural-sounding fusion (controversially for the time) of the influences of Schoenberg and Stravinsky. The borrowings from the latter did nothing to improve Henze’s standing with the avant garde: two years earlier, Boulez and Stockhausen had walked out of the première of Nachtstücke und Arien, and the new opera left him further out of step. But Henze was writing for a different audience than the Darmstadt ‘new music’ elite and, in being vilified for composing as he saw fit, may have had some kindred feeling with the hapless Prince.

Eckhart Schmidt’s film is a most faithful record of Lehnhoff’s 1994 production (seen in London two years later). Le Roux is almost ideal as the lovestruck dreamer Prince, alternately distracted and impetuous. His chemistry with MariAnne Häggander – who sings beautifully – is tangible, essential for a successful production, though it is William Cochran, rich-voiced and expressively stern as the severe but not unbending Elector, who steals the show. Sawallisch directs the Bavarian State Orchestra impeccably, the sound spacious and clear. Der Prinz von Homburg may not be as spectacular as König Hirsch or The Bassarids, or as directly popular as Der junge Lord, but it remains one of Henze’s most completely achieved and important operas. Its appearance on DVD (there is no CD equivalent) is unequivocal cause for celebration.