"Editor's choices - August 2020: Gothic goings-on of a more extravagant nature also abound in Saint-Saëns's first opera (given here in its final, 1914 version), and Roth and his period band rise to the occasion with just the right amount of Grand Guignol roughness around the edges; the plot may look forward to Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann, but the manic energy of the score has more than a whiff of Berlioz, and in particular the Symphonie fantastique. Montvidas, also a fine Hoffmann, is superb as the feverish artist who strikes a devilish bargain - or does he?".