So – the words or the music? Which have primacy? Even with the world’s first great opera, Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, opening the festival, and Strauss’s final testament on the very nature of opera, Capriccio, bringing down the curtain, the jury remains out. Strauss’s Countess in Capriccio has an impossible decision to make between poet and composer – and, in this new co-production between the Edinburgh Festival and the Cologne Opera, it isn’t her only tough choice.

Set Capriccio in the Munich of 1942 in which it was written and you’re likely to be accused of the unforgiveable sin of director’s opera. Stage it, on the other hand, in the salons of 1777 France in which the tale is told and you could well be evading an issue or two. Christian von Götz, directing Cologne Opera, has shown that it’s possible to have it both ways.

This Capriccio is an escapist house party assembled during the Second World War. As the sour-sweet strings of the overture are heard, we watch an official involved in paperwork for which he will pay. A Jewish father and daughter take the papers and flee.

A scarlet curtain descends, and a kaleidoscopic wardrobe of 18th-century costumes is donned – the designer Gabriele Jaenecke has spared neither expense nor imagination. The Countess enters against a vortex of a spiral staircase backdrop. As discussion and flirtation gather momentum, so the staircase disintegrates into rubble. Leather-coated men hover in the wings. The Countess weeps. Finally, the Countess leaves – not for supper, but for the railway station, and under escort.

It’s an almost obligatory line to take for a German director. And it could seem irritatingly didactic were it not for the commitment of every member of the cast, and the emotional support from the Gürzenich Orchestra, conducted by Markus Stenz. Gabriele Fontana, indefatigable of voice, takes us with her through every moment of the Countess’s emotional journey, and Ashley Holland is well matched as the Count. Hauke Möller as Flamand and Johannes Beck as Olivier embody their respective callings, Michael Eder is magnificent as the director La Roche – while Johannes Preissinger (did I see a yellow star on his jacket?) offers a dark take on the role of the prompter, Monsieur Taupe, who is offered transport home.

Despite the considerable power of this Capriccio, it didn’t eclipse memories of the morning’s outstanding recital in the Queen’s Hall, given by the soprano Christine Brewer, accompanied by Roger Vignoles. They, too, had resonant things to say about Strauss, and Britten’s Cabaret Songs have rarely hit home so hard.

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