[2] The cover of the album, designed under the art direction of J. J. Stelmach, features a photograph by Murrae Haynes of von Stade performing in Chérubin at Santa Fe in 1989.

Michel Sénéchal painted a "predictably engaging" portrait of his pompous Duke, and Samuel Ramey sang with an "appropriate air of mature wisdom" as the philosopher charged with the heavy burden of teaching Chérubin the difference between right and wrong.

Conducting, Pinchas Steinberg favoured the brisk tempi appropriate to the opera's comic essence, although he slackened his pace whenever Massenet was seeking not just to amuse his audience but to speak to their hearts.

Readers unfamiliar with this long forgotten work would discover an erotic, rococo, "light and bubbly theatrical entertainment" that ultimately became something more, concluding in an affecting quarter of an hour in which Chérubin learned what the meaning of love truly was.

She sang with "grace" in her opening quasi-minuet, with "ardour" in romantic passages, with "fine adolescent gallantry" when Chérubin was upholding his chivalric code and with a "touchingly restrained pathos" when it seemed as though the foolish young hothead might be digging an early grave for himself.

Samuel Ramey was "ideally firm and clean" in his singing but somewhat disappointing in his acting, making his philosopher rather starchy when a French cousin of Don Alfonso (in Mozart's Così fan tutte) would have been more enjoyable.

", he wrote, equally delighted by Frederica von Stade's Chérubin, Dawn Upshaw as "the faithful Nina", June Anderson as "the sexy dancer" and Samuel Ramey as "the Panglossian philosophy prof".

Dramatically, there was no denying that it was ludicrous, passé and sexist, with a protagonist who was no longer the amorous butterfly of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro but an "insufferable little macho punk of seventeen" who wanted to bed every woman that crossed his path.

"With the three leading women's roles being taken by Frederica von Stade, June Anderson and Dawn Upshaw," he wrote, "it offers high-quality singing and lively personality to spare."