Mignon is a 194-minute studio album of Ambroise Thomas's opera, performed by André Battedou, Marilyn Horne, Paul Hudson, Claude Méloni, Frederica von Stade, Alain Vanzo, Ruth Welting and Nicola Zaccaria with the Ambrosian Opera Chorus and the Philharmonia Orchestra under the direction of Antonio de Almeida.

And finally, Frédéric was changed from a buffo tenor into a contralto, and was awarded his Act 2 Gavotte to appease the singer who was to perform the regendered role.

The version of the opera presented on de Almeida's album largely follows Thomas's 1870 edition, except that Philine's insert aria – for which the original orchestration has been lost – is consigned to an appendix, where its accompaniment is provided by a harpsichord and a flute.

Welting sang with the "light insouciance" of the great French soubrettes of yesteryear, and delivered her coloratura and trills with an expert, irresistible brilliance.

Alain Vanzo, "elegant and involved", was blessed with exactly the right type of voice for Wilhelm, and his versions of the student's showpiece arias were in no way inferior to those recorded by even the most revered tenors of Mignon's heyday.

Firstly, de Almeida's decision to use Thomas's recitatives rather than the libretto's original dialogue meant that the impact of the opera's mélodrames was lessened.

Like Blyth, he acknowledged the many good things that Horne brought to the opera - her genius for vocal gymnastics, her dependable evenness of tone, her dramatic intensity in Mignon's Act 2 crisis.

Her Polonaise did not have as much devil-may-care élan as it might have done, but it was precise and it culminated in a firework of a high F. Frederica von Stade, admirable too, sang Frédéric's Gavotte with "lightness and charm".

Alain Vanzo sang Wilhelm in a style that was authentically French: moreover, his lyric tenor had an instrumental purity, maintaining its quality even in its highest reaches.

Antonio de Almeida gave the opera "an appropriately pastoral, fairy-tale aura through a sensitive and refined reading", although his conducting would have been even better with less of a bias towards tempi that trudged when they should have strode.

Even though her voice was no longer all that it had been in its prime, her tone was still "quite exceptionally rich and gorgeous", "most lovely, for instance, in the velvety opening phrases of 'Connais-tu le pays?'"

Alain Vanzo, whom he thought the best French tenor of his era, seemed to sing some of Wilhelm's music with too much vim as though to ward off any perception that the character was rather puny.

The opera itself Steane thought good except at its very end, where Thomas had been unable to respond adequately to the dramatic demands of the story's climax.

[3][2] In 1988, Sony issued the album on CD (catalogue number SM3K 34590) with a 112-page booklet containing libretti, synopses and an essay by Barrymore Laurence Scherer in English, French, German and Italian, as well as photographs of Horne, von Stade, Vanzo, Welting, Zaccaria and de Almeida.