Levine's recording is predictably sumptuous in sound quality with not much indication that this is really a work for chamber forces. The voices are placed a long way back, and could do with closer miking - they are in danger of being drowned at times. There is also a trace of artificiality in the acoustic from time to time.

Agnes Baltsa makes an excellent composer. Though a mezzo, her tone is almost that of a soprano at times - she is perfectly happy with the role's highish tessitura, and she evokes the character's varied moods well, sounding both angry and vulnerable. More than thirty years after his first Ariadne recording (for Karajan, as Harlekin), Hermann Prey is still in good voice as the music master, and is one of the best singers in the role. He works well with Otto Schenk's rather bizarre major domo, who elides so many of his consonants (deliberately?) that he sounds drunk.

Kathleen Battle is without a doubt the sexiest-sounding Zerbinetta on any recording. the tone is sweet from top to bottom, and she is most effective in straightforward seductive mode, as in her duet with the composer at the end of the prologue, where she moulds her phrases beautifully. She also does her bitchy asides to the primadonna well. In her aria she is extremely accurate - note perfect but for the lack of a convincing trill - but she tends to come across as earnest instead of playful.

With that we come to the real drawbacks of this recording. Anna Tomowa-Sintow sounds rather too mature for Ariadne - her attack is clumsy and she lacks the even line necessary for the role. Her performance is not a write-off - she has good imagination and sings with feeling. It's just a pity the recording didn't catch her a bit earlier. As Bacchus, Gary Lakes can sing all the notes with relative ease, but his tone, while clearly powerful, somehow sounds dry and coreless.