This was the Lübeck Opera’s first staging of Ariadne auf Naxos, in a very lively staging by Karlheinx Hundorf which, according to the local Freie Press, placed the accent on helter-skelter fun in the Prologue. Company member Violetta Vary sang the title role with ‘intense sympathy’, but much critical attention was focused on another company member, Edith Vogt-Thieke, four months before she scored an even more resounding success as Eva in Die Meistersinger. Christoph von Dohnányi was ‘a fine and penetrating interpreter’ of Richard Strauss’s score.