"Orpheus in der Unterwelt", Offenbach’s satirical answer to Gluck’s “Orfeo”, was premiered in Paris 1858 and portrays society as amoral, the upper class as lax and indifferent to all and public opinion in charge of both.

In the early 1980s legendary director Götz Friedrich created his own contemporary version of the operetta at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, in German, filled with allusions to the contemporary cultural scene and society in general. Starring a large cast of renowned artists – singers and actors – Orpheus’ odyssey to the Olympic Gods and to the Underworld, in order to save his wife, receives a new face – away from Paris in the 19th century and to bourgeois West-Berlin. The performance stars Julia Migenes Johnson, Donald Grobe, Astrid Varnay and George Shirley, to name but a few. Jesús López Cobos has the musical direction in this production.