Reversing the usual procedure by which 'highlights' are later extracted from a recording of a complete opera, here we are given Lakme in full after having our appetites for this performance whetted by extracts already issued (in September 1984, though only on LP and cassette). So far as the CD field is concerned, this has no rival, the Robin/Gressier version on Rodolphe listed above being disjointed, savagely cut, with a poor orchestra and poorly recorded. The present performance also stands up quite well against the famous Sutherland/Bonynge Decca LP recording made only a year previously: the conductor has the right feeling for the work, the orchestral playing is committed, and the cast—save perhaps for a mezzo in the ungrateful small part of a caricatured English governess—is a good one. Mady Mesple's fast vibrato is not to everyone's taste, but every word of hers is crystal clear (compare Sutherland's!) and meaningful (compare her ''Va-t-en!'' with Mado Robin's), her light, very French quality suggests Lakme's youth and ''candeur d'enfant'', she floats her high notes with great purity and impeccable intonation, her coloratura in the Bell Song is wonderfully true, and she invests ''Pourquoi dans les grands bois'' with an innocent pathos and ''C'est le Dieu de la jeunesse'' with tender reminiscence: the Flower duet with Danielle Millet is charming. Outstanding among the other characters is Roger Soyer as her father, the vengeful Brahmin: a fine and noble basse chantant. Charles Burles as the English officer so infatuated with Lakme's exotic beauty that he abandons his soldierly responsibilities sings appealingly and with feeling, though his voice tends to lose quality under pressure: in this role Alain Vanzo (in the Decca set) was in a class by himself.
The notoriously reverberant acoustics of the Salle Wagram make the strings larger than life and inflate the orchestral sound as a whole—to the detriment of the chorus, which seems to have been allotted no microphone of its own and, being picked up only on the orchestral mikes, is often absurdly distant (as in the Act 2 market scene) and has no hope of making its words heard. Talking of words, apparently no one thought to check whether the text and translation provided (borrowed from the Decca set) tallied with the version actually sung: it doesn't—conspicuously so for a whole scene near the end of the first disc.'