[3] Frederica von Stade, he wrote, "well conveys Mélisande's wide-eyed innocence and simplicity by her purity of voice and lightness of tone, and makes credible the transition from the startled gazelle of the opening to the awakening woman of Act 4".

As Golaud, José van Dam gave a "distinguished" performance, equally convincing in the Prince's inability to understand Mélisande, his chilling passive aggression and his paroxysms of murderous fury.

It was not his fault that his Arkel sounded too much like Pascal Thomas's physician in their scene at Mélisande's death bed, but he should have defined the King's character more clearly, and he should have been more conscientious in observing Debussy's meticulously crafted speech rhythms (a sin of which some of his colleagues were guilty too, although not to the same extent).

Conducting a "uniquely subtle score" in which "understatement [was] customary", Herbert von Karajan presented an interpretation that was "decidedly unorthodox" to the point of blatantly defying some of the dynamics that Debussy had stipulated.

His Pelléas "seethes with barely-suppressed tensions which constantly erupt in passionate outbursts: again and again the orchestra boils over in an ecstasy which can scarcely be contained by the sound engineers".

Karajan's reading was powerfully atmospheric and "often ravishing, with a rich, glowing warmth", but his handling of his orchestra threw a veil over some of the score's finer details.

Frederica von Stade, he wrote, as the "mystery-surrounded Mélisande, is not only innocent and evasive, but, when the time comes, passionate, despondent, welcoming of death, ... tragic rather than pathetic".

Richard Stilwell's Pelléas was eager despite his fear, José van Dam's Golaud genuine and traumatized, Ruggero Raimondi's Arkel embracing and aptly Debussyan, Christine Barbaux's Yniold excellent, Nadine Denize's Geneviève euphonious and Pascal Thomas's shepherd and physician entirely satisfactory.

EMI's production team had favoured strings over woodwinds and voices but not culpably so, and had achieved an audio quality commendable for "its clarity, its warmth and beauty of sound and its exceedingly wide dynamic range".

The recording's male singers did not give him quite as much pleasure, not because they were guilty of doing anything wrong but because their voices were too alike to allow Debussy to deploy the full range of colours on his palette.

"Frederica von Stade's Mélisande", she wrote, "is without doubt the central performance: there is the sense of animal instinct, the raw nerve endings, the simplicity ... And there is, above all, her sensitivity to the changes of register".

Herbert von Karajan's interpretation, a "great crescendo of inexorability", had been accused of unduly emphasizing the Wagnerian element in Debussy's musical personality against which the composer had struggled.