This is a live recording from the second of five performances in March 1969 that were to have been conducted by Ernest Ansermet. His death the previous month thrust Jean-Marie Auberson onto the podium and, to judge by this single evening, the results were far from distinguished.

Eric Tappy sings Pelléas accurately but without much grace or obvious affection. Opera lovers wanting to hear Spoorenberg and Souzay as Mélisande and Golaud would do better to find them separately on the Ansermet and Cluytens sets. Admittedly Ansermet, with the same orchestra five years earlier, enjoyed the comfort of a studio recording, and you do have to put up with George London barking irritably, but Souzay, de los Angeles and Jacques Jansen were the dream team of 1956. Both Ansermet and Cluytens give the impression that conducting this opera is a piece of cake. Auberson, sadly, lets us know the savage truth, with many a late entry and missing nuance.

In addition you have all the usual encumbrances of a live take – coughs, rustles, bumps, singers suddenly fading into the distance or bursting alarmingly into life. The balancing of the orchestral sound is also unstable with woodwind sometimes (though not always) inaudible. For this recording to be presented even remotely as a homage to Ansermet does no honour to anyone.