Such generic circuit arrangements are used, for example, for rear projections in the TV sector. In this case, the high-pressure discharge lamp is operated with a constant square-wave current or else stepped square-wave currents. A typical operating frequency is 100 Hz. In order to start the high-pressure discharge lamp, at present two different variants are used: the first variant is resonance starting, which can be realized with comparatively little complexity but which has the significant disadvantage of a long restarting time of the hot high-pressure discharge lamp of approximately 120 s. In the case of resonance starting, an LC circuit, for example, is brought to resonance and the high voltage resulting from resonance magnification is used for starting purposes. The second known variant is so-called pulse starting, which is characterized by the fact that a component, for example a sidac or a spark discharge gap, is used for the breakdown. This method has a relatively short restarting time of from 10 s to 20 s. Unfortunately, circuit arrangements with pulse starting are characterized by markedly increased implementation complexity, which results in undesirably high costs.