'Hardly has there appeared a live recording of Spohr's Faust from the Bielefeld opera under Geoffrey Moull on CPO, which I reviewed last August, than here comes another, from the 1993 Bad Urach Festival, conducted by Klaus Arp. However, the versions are completely different. Spohr originally wrote the work in two acts, for Weber to conduct in Prague in 1816, the pioneering year for German romantic opera that also saw Hoffmann's Undine; he slightly revised it for another performance two years later, adding one or two numbers, and this is what is recorded here. In 1852 he thoroughly rewrote the work, revising it from two acts into three as a grand opera for Covent Garden, with the dialogue (not included here) abbreviated into recitative. There are a number of implications, chiefly the expansion of the character of the wicked Sir Gulf in the second version; but these will be of interest mainly to committed Spohr enthusiasts, who will want both versions whatever the shortcomings. Neither is outstandingly well sung, and the conditions of live performance involve a certain amount of audience participation and recordings that do less than full justice to orchestration which Weber, in an essay introducing his own performance, praised for its ''intensely scrupulous attention to detail''.In the present performance, the principal gain is Hillevi Martinpelto's singing of Kunigunde, the seductress whose potency once caused proper-minded sopranos to recoil from taking on the part at all. She may not seem so devastating nowadays but the music has charm and allure, and her numbers (especially ''Ja, ich fuhl' es'') are elegantly shaped here and sung with a bit of smoulder. Boje Skovhus has a little difficulty with the Italianate melismata which Spohr inappropriately made part of the melodic line in this German romantic opera and some of the part lies a little low for him, but he gives a fair account of Faust's aspirations and weaknesses. His attendant Mephistopheles calls for a little more sheer vocal energy from Franz Hawlata, though there is a sense of the sinister and the malevolent. Robert Swensen sings the part of the young hero Hugo energetically, but there is a shrill, quavery performance of Roschen from Brigitte Wohlfarth. The other parts, including the important chorus, are vigorously sung with a sense of enjoyment in the whole enterprise.The booklet includes an essay and synopsis in German, English and French, with the original text and the same English translation that was used for the previous CPO issue, complete with misprints (''how fowl a spell did blind me''). It was perhaps unwise of Susan Marie Praeder to put her name to this, as it is to all intents and purposes that by J. Wrey Mould published in the old Boosey vocal score, and includes in this version such gems as ''Be thrift in thy course, loitering sunset'' and ''Attempt and know the beetling Alp less steady'' As the chorus rightly observe, ''Pish! the thing's absurd''.' Grammophone