Thank you all for the help.
- eventually, the only thing I could do was copying, bit-by-bit the CD into my digital library on an SSD, so at least I can now listen to the music, without compression and through a DAC;
- the problem was not the DAC - the signal never quite made it that far, since the transport itself didn't recognize that it was fed a CD;
- other players: my 10-dollar CD-radio in the bathroom played the disk without a problem. Perhaps I should give up on all the fancy stuff and just go back to the boombox of my greener days;
Kapsberger: yes, and thank you. I also have a number of recordings with his music but, being a lutenist, I mostly focused on his plucking and not his operas.