New National Theatre Tokyo
Dresden's Semperoper gave the opera for the first time in 1995 in a celebrated primary-color staging by Willy Decker. The Japan premiere, which took place at the New National Theatre Tokyo in May 2008, conducted by Hiroshi Wakasugi the year before he died, used this Decker staging; Wakasugi had served as a permanent conductor of the Semperoper from 1982 to 1991 and had recorded Zimmermann's original (1963) "Vokal-Sinfonie "Die Soldaten" für 6 Gesangs-Solisten und Orchester" with WDR forces, in London, in 1978.