"Recommended: This 2017 La Scala production is a game-changer, however, and it does the best job I've yet seen of putting the opera on stage in a way that is neither daft nor wilfully obstructive. Matthias Hartmann goes for a mixture of the specific and the abstract. There are plenty of trees to put us in the forest, but well-placed strips of lighting suggest the church, the hut and the mountainscape behind ... The musical performances are excellent too. Who would have thought that the La Scala orchestra would be so good at this cornerstone of the German repertoire? ... The singers are top-notch. Julia Kleiter is radiant, luxuriously beautiful in her two big arias ... I found it completely compelling and was totally won over ... By some margin the best opera film I've seen in 2019 so far"