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| | Classics Today.com - Your Online Guide to Classical Music |
 | | Updated to the late-19th century with no particular iconoclastic ax to grind by director Götz Friedrich, this production, premiered at the Deutsche Oper in 1993 (the taping of this performance was in 1995), is remarkable in its warmth, character delineation, and refusal to caricature anyone. |
 | | Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos keeps the action moving, with the second-act melée nice and clear, and he elicits beautifully thoughtful playing from the Deutsche Oper orchestra in the opera's many tender moments. |
 | | Peter Sykora's sets are good-looking, useful, and frill-free, and the first act features, to one side, a colorful banner of a Star of David, with the Biblical David and his lyre superimposed: the universality of music watches over even a city with the troubled past of Nuremberg. |
| www.classicstoday.com /review.asp?ReviewNum=8044 (527 words) |
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