The production by Willy Decker of Korngold’s most famous opera at last year’s Salzburg Festival created something of a sensation. It has since been seen in several other cities and now makes its welcome arrival on CD. Georges Rodenbach’s 1892 novel Bruges la morte, on which the 22-year-old Korngold and his father based the libretto (under the pseudonym Paul Schott), deals with a man’s obsession with his dead lover. In 1920 this struck an immediate spark with audiences recovering from the aftermath of the First World War and, with Korngold’s mixture of big, soupy tunes and a sort of post-Wagnerian gloom, it was an immediate hit. The two most famous numbers, Marietta’s Lute Song in Act 1, and the Pierrot serenade, ‘Mein Sehnen, mein Wähnen’ have become recital favourites.

This new set is quite satisfactory but is up against some fairly stiff competition. First there is the famous Leinsdorf recording, now 30 years old but still immensely impressive, starring René Kollo and Carol Neblett. In 1997 came a live version on Naxos, which also has a good deal going for it; most recently there was a DVD from L’Opéra du Rhin conducted by Jan Latham-Koenig, with the same principals as in this Salzburg performance, Torsten Kerl as Paul and Angela Denoke as Marietta, both in somewhat firmer voice back in 2001 (it also has Stephan Genz as a vivid Fritz).

Few people, surely, would feel the need for more than one recording of this enjoyable farrago of sex and spiritualism. Maria Jeritza, who was the first Marietta in Vienna and New York, claimed that the opera presents ‘The struggle of present over past…of hypocritical morality over an artist’s freedom’.

Although there is a good deal of noise from movements on stage, the sound quality here is exceptionally vivid for a live event. Though Denoke is no Jeritza, she has an attractive voice and joins Kerl sweetly in the famous duet ‘Glück, das mir verblieb’. They both hurl themselves into the increasingly violent scenes as the fantasy affair progresses. Bo Skovhus is his usual glamorous self, doubling the roles of Fritz and Frank, the faithful guardian of his friend’s sanity.

Runnicles and the Vienna Philharmonic play the piece with some fire, bringing out every one of Korngold’s ragbag of Puccini, Strauss and Wagner allusions. You have to be in the mood for an overdose of kitsch but when it works, as it does here, Die tote Stadt still packs a punch.