I think Gounod's best-known work, much as I love his funeral march for a marionette, is the opera Faust, which is called Marguerite in Germany where they think the opera is a bastardization of Goethe's epic.
The opera began as an opera-comique with spoken dialogue, and this version has recently been recorded. Since then, we've also had a recording of the original English version, but the standard text for the last 150 years has been recorded complete in the Paris Grand Opera version, or with standard cut, the largest cut being the Walpurgisnacht scene and its Big Ballet, which I love. So this is the version of the opera I prefer, and I think the last one in the Grand Parisian tradition may be this one, with an excellent cast, although Boris Christoff's Devil seems more of a growler than a suave Parisian.
Too many later recordings drop the Walpurgisnacht and add the ballet, along with earlier cut numbers, as an appendix. This Cluytens recording follows the wonderful Dover edition of the full score.
