Excellent!!

Good turnaound time.

The music was good quality and the songs were good quality. I enjoyed the music to go along with the play.

The product was what I ordered but did not come with a libretto booklet keyed to the music. They sent an additional CD with the libretto on it. This does not work if you want to follow along from the comfort of an easy chair and don't have a computer handy. Very inconvenient to the point that I will no longer purchase any opera sets from Warner Classics in the future. It's a shame since the recording has an excellent cast. Poo poo on Warner.

I really enjoyed all the great melodies and what do you have to say about the singing.I love the dvd and cd both are just great.But I am going to tell how this tale ends,Some thing best left unsaid.

Gheorghiu and Alagna are to Gounod's opera what Fonteyn and Nureyev were to Prokofiev's ballet. I say timeless because due to the caliber of performance you forget they were supposed to be very young teenagers. (I will also include Olivier and Leigh in Shakespeare's play.) I only wish I had a DVD rather than a CD! This CD comes very highly recommended.

Let's start with the positive aspects of this CD-it's very complete, informative, has a CD-ROM feature, and it looks good on your CD shelf. The singers also have acceptable French and Alagna absolutely soars! But annoyingly, the accompanying book provides the libretto with a translation that is not lined up with the French. How hard is it to line up the translation?? Being a coloratura soprano myself, I was particularly interested in Gheorghiu's interpretation of Juliette's waltz "Je veux vivre". In fact, I bought this recording to aid my learning of the role, but in my opinion, Angela completely murders this aria. Was she even reading the music? Her voice is sluggish and exhibits an unflattering vibrato, not to mention the completely overdone slurring. Granted, as a major opera star I suppose she is allowed to take liberties with the music, but thoroughly ignoring rests and articulation does not fly in my book. In addition, where is the youthfulness of Juliette in Angela's portrayal? Saying all this, I do appreciate the inclusion of the often cut Poison Aria at the end, but if you are a soprano looking for a role model, this would not be my first choice.

This was an Opera written in the late 1860's. Gounod was a famous 19th century French Opera composer. His greatest Opera is Faust. This Opera was another of his famous works. I once had this on an old LP boxed set with different singers. Which has long ago been given away. I then bought it on CD with other major singers. When this work was staged at the Paris Opera in the 1880's, Gounod was asked to compose a ballet. Most productions and recordings omit the ballet music. Always want to hear this music. I finally found a CD set where it was included. Of all my Gounod recording the conductor was Plasson. He always did a fantastic job. This EMI release of 1998 is a enhanced recording. Which means there is no paperwork. Everything is on CD- ROM the facts on the artists and the libretto. It will play well on the standard CD player. On the computer you get more. Something that is new time me. But my older CD of this opera has the complete libretto minus the ballets sections of the score. So I have the best of both worlds