Ferruccio Busoni laboured on Doktor Faust for the best part of 20 years. Unfinished at the time of his death, it was completed by his pupil, Philipp Jarnach. It’s not only his magnum opus, it’s one of the most original and compelling music dramas of the last 100 years. While there are three complete audio recordings (two studio, one live), it has never made it to DVD making this respectable effort from Maggio Musicale Fiorentino a collector’s item. 

Rather than take Goethe as his starting point Busoni, who wrote his own libretto, went very much his own way (often the case with this remarkable artist). Starting with the story as it appears in traditional puppet theatre (not that there are any puppets here), he concocted a series of virtually disconnected tableau. Doktor Faust is therefore closer to Boito’s Mefistofele or Schumann’s Scenes from Goethe’s Faust than anything by Gounod. Pulling this idiosyncratic opera off calls for boldness and imagination.

Davide Livermore’s ambitious 2023 staging utilises the kind of tricksy projections familiar...