According to a review in the Dutch music magazine Luister, tenor John van Kesteren was Carl Orff's favorite 'roasted swan', and Orff sent letters of recommendation on his behalf to whoever in the world wanted to stage the Carmina Burana. Van Kesteren still sang his solo in 2000 in Barcelona, and in 2001 in Ottawa at the age of 80.
John van Kesteren and Aviva Skell, who played the 'Chünegin von Engellant' (Queen of England) in a brief scene, and acted as Lucia Popp's body double, confirmed that Carl Orff was present on the set during the filming, and was absolutely delighted with the production design. Skell commented that no expense was spared for the staging, exquisite costumes were specially made, and applying make-up took a team of artists two hours every day. A real tree was chopped up, and then reassembled at the Bavaria Studio, on the largest sound stage in Germany. The pool in the fake meadow was stocked with live carp. The fire that set the haycart ablaze was real as well.
Carl Orff on Carmina Burana in an interview printed in the DVD booklet, translated from German: "It is precisely this work that has a great deal to do with the time in which it was composed. The Latin language gave it a European connection, a common European bond, which remained impenetrable to the Nazis and which they mistrusted." The work did indeed confuse the Nazis, earning both praise and scorn, as later argued by musicologist Richard Taruskin in the New York Times and The Oxford History of Western Music. The Völkischer Beobachter, the Nazi Party's official organ, at the time heartily recommended the cantata as ''the kind of clear, stormy and yet always disciplined music that our time requires". On the other hand, this paper also lambasted it for the "incomprehensibility of the language" and its "jazzy atmosphere".
Composer Carl Orff said in an interview that he became enthralled with the theater at a very young age, and as he started conducting and later composing for the theater as an adult, he still kept thinking in visual terms. The full title for Carmina Burana contains the Latin phrase "atque imaginibus magicis", which means "also with magical images", so this visualization is very much in keeping with Orff's original conception.
The Penguin Guide lists this filmed performance as one of the 1000 finest classical recordings: outstanding soloists with an imaginative staging.