The only negative thing that he could find to say about Frederica von Stade's performance of the opera's title role was that she was a mezzo singing music conceived for a soprano.

She was entirely at home in Massenet's "enchanting, light-fingered" style, and expressed every chapter of Cendrillon's story, both sorrowful and joyous, with equal eloquence.

The album's other three women were all good too, with Teresa Cahill and Elizabeth Bainbridge "sprightly" as Cendrillon's stepsisters and Jane Berbié bringing out all the comical villainy of their mother.

The opera itself was "imbued with warmth, ingenuity and charming colours", a score offering craftsmanship, magic, gossamer, erotic passion and Massenet "at his most bewitching".

Jane Berbié was "capital" as Mme de la Haltière, and Teresa Cahill and Elizabeth Bainbridge "harmonize prettily" as her daughters, none of them being obliged to perpetrate any Despina-like grotesquery in the interest of comic effect.

The orchestra presented Massenet's ball, march and pantomime music with "charm, dash and emphasis", and Julius Rudel's conducting achieved a laudable precision of ensemble.

Bastin lacked the "finesse and vocal elegance" for Pandolfe, and Gedda was doubly disqualified from singing Prince Charming by his considerable years and his not being the en travesti mezzo-soprano that Massenet had intended.

The album's chorus and orchestra were both excellent, the Ambrosians singing with unimpeachable technique and dramaturgical imagination and the Philharmonia making the most of Massenet's fresh, animated score.

Cendrillon was, Steane promised, "a most delightful web of moonshine choruses, pastoral woodwind, coloratura filigree, wistful sentiment and neat comedy", and readers should not miss the opportunity to hear it for themselves.

"Who could resist Frederica von Stade's ethereal Cinderella", he asked, "as she falls in love at the ball with the words, 'Vous êtes mon Prince Charmant!'?"

Unlike his Gramophone colleagues, he found Ruth Welting's Fairy Godmother "a touch edgy", but he was at one with them in his bemusement that CBS had allotted Prince Charming to the "hard-pressed" tenor of Nicolai Gedda instead of the "elegant female pantomime boy" of Massenet's wishes.

The opera itself he thought good in parts, mocking its court scenes as pedestrian but acknowledging the "sprinkling of fairy dust over so much of the rest" as "pure magic".

[3] In December 1979, Alan Blyth included the album in his "Critic's Choice" list of the best recordings of the year: "I cannot imagine a more appropriate Christmas present than CBS's delightful recording of the composer's light-fingered score for Cendrillon with Frederica von Stade as a tender, pathetic Cinderella, Ruth Welting as an airy Fairy and idiomatic conducting from Julius Rudel, so responsive to Massenet's delicate scoring".