Tenor Benjamin Bernheim is a superb Faust, with a bright and lovely lyric voice that is also comfortable in the lower tessitura of act I. As Marguerite, soprano Véronique Gens is an ideal romantic partner, with a rich and beautiful voice. The recorded sound is marvelous, with the performance showcased to the utmost both in tonal beauty and dramatic impact. For someone like me who has treasured Faust his entire life, this magnificent representation of the opera’s original version is a gift beyond description.

It’s little short of a revelation, in which some century and a half of performance tradition is scraped away to reveal a witty, fleet-footed work that comes close to the composer’s (and librettists’) original conception...It also happens to be a terrific recording on its own terms...Rousset underpins it all with conducting that is fleet and dramatically engaged.

A finely turned performance under Rousset— thoroughly prepared, carefully cast, spoken and (by and large) sung with both style and technical security, its choral and orchestral parts delivered with wonderful verve… Its star is the young tenor Benjamin Bernheim, who takes the title part with exceptional charm, poise and youthful ease of delivery.

The Golden Calf’s replaced by an avaricious beetle, and several of the opera’s Greatest Hits (notably Valentin’s Prayer and the Soldiers’ Chorus) are absent on this snappy, period-instrument account of Faust in its more sardonic and succinct original version, but the pay-offs are many and varied...Bernheim's light-voiced, Dorian Gray-ish hero is idiomatic, elegant and engaging.

It emerges spring-cleaned of 150 years of Victorian accretions and cobwebs in Rousset’s hands...There’s wonderful singing from Benjamin Bernheim as Faust, an immaculate stylist who crowns the famous air Salut, demeure with a perfectly placed high C in voix mixte. Véronique Gens’s lyric Marguerite and Andrew Foster-Williams’s wittily sardonic Méphistophélès are excellent. A revelation.

The original 1859 version sounds spring-cleaned, Victorian cobwebs swept away, in this bracing performance.

Christophe Rousset uses period instruments and creates an astonishingly different sound world: harder, less swooning, sharper. Benjamin Bernheim is a relatively light-voiced Faust, ardent and fresh. Véronique Gens’ soprano has the right vocal weight and plush tone for Marguerite but she is occasionally pushed at the very top. Andrew Foster- Williams is debonair and louche, and his lithe bass-baritone fits Méphistophélès’ tessitura perfectly.