Die Frau ohne Schat­ten by Richard Strauss turned everything topsy-turvy at this year’s Salzburg Fest­iv­al. The op­era is not per­formed very of­ten be­cause of the de­mands it makes on cast­ing, scenery, and or­ches­tra: It ba­sic­ally needs two top-notch dra­mat­ic sop­ranos, one Heldenten­or, a dra­mat­ic mezzo and one pro­found bass-bari­tone – all of them if pos­sible with a lyr­ic­al bent and fur­ther­more, it asks for over 150 in­stru­ments and al­most as many mu­si­cians.

Fi­nally avail­able to de­but con­duct­ing an op­era at the Salzburg Fest­iv­al this sum­mer, Chris­ti­an Thiele­mann, the great Strauss in­ter­pret­er ac­cep­ted the chal­lenge.

The new sta­ging of Hugo von Hoff­man­sth­al’s sym­bol­ic tale by Chris­tof Loy is brought to life by a line-up of the greatest Strauss sing­ers of our time and proved to be one of this sum­mer’s high­lights.

‘Be­hind the Scenes’ ac­com­pan­ies the ex­cep­tion­al con­duct­or at the Salzburg Fest­iv­al. The doc­u­ment­ary provides in­sight in­to the mu­sic­al cre­ation pro­cess of an op­era. It shows how Chris­ti­an Thiele­mann works with the sing­ers and the Vi­enna Phil­har­mon­ic Or­ches­tra, and in­cludes stage re­hears­al scenes as well as in­ter­views with the con­duct­or him­self, the stage dir­ect­or Chris­toph Loy and the lead sing­ers, Anne Schwanewilms, Evelyn Herl­itzi­us, Mi­chaela Schuster and Wolfgang Koch.