Gounod’s Faust (known as Margarethe in German theatres) was deemed ripe for a modernist makeover at the Frankfurt Opera, and Bohumil Herlischka’s new production obliged with an ironically charged, technically sophisticated take on this warhorse of French Romantic opera which inevitably provoked some booing on the first night. Working outside his usual repertoire, Christoph von Dohnányi ‘kept an intelligent control over the proceedings’ according to Opera magazine: ‘his reading was rather sober and avoided sentimentality.’