Opera to mark Hitler's birthday met with chorus of disapproval

Berlin's biggest opera house, the Deutsche Oper, has been forced to backtrack on plans to stage a re-launched version of Adolf Hitler's favourite Wagner opera on the Nazi leader's birthday.

Hitler, who as a young man became fanatical about Richard Wagner's works, said the composer's 1842 production, Rienzi, was his all-time favourite and an inspiration for his politics. It tells the story of Cola di Rienzi, a medieval Italian folk hero who leads a people's uprising against the nobility.

The Nazi leader is said to have liked the work so much that he asked for a manuscript of the production to be given to him on his 50th birthday. Historians say Hitler had the document with him when he committed suicide in his Berlin bunker in 1945....