MOSES UND ARON

Just as they did with their film on Bach, the Straubs worked on this huge project for years: a film adaptation of Arnold Schoenberg's opera \"Moses and Aaron\", sung in the open air in an old Roman amphitheatre, with a golden calf, dance, blood and wild animals. In comparison to all the shabby film versions of operas shot for middle-class intellectuals, the Straubs' film is an impressive, radical production, in which nothing has been sacrificed and no unnecessary directing antics have been added. Those who apply the words asceticism and severity to the Straubs, should watch this magnificent, sensuous spectacle, in which everything is saturated with the beauty of necessity. \"The Straubs\", says conductor Michael Gielen, \"are something like a living conscience of music\".