DESCRIPTION:
pf: Arturo Toscanini cond/ NBC Symphony Orchestra (radio broadcast from 1947)
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NOTE: As far as I know, this orchestral suite was prepared by Toscanini himself, and this is the only existing recording of the suite. The suite is roughly comprised of two parts: Act 1 beginning (0:00 - 19:17) and Act 2 Finale (19:17 - 21:13). However, there are a lot of cuts which were made to preserve a musical flow due to the lack of voices (in the first half at least). There are also a few cases of added instrumentation, more often than not to recreate the melodic line of the voices, but not always. So if you hear a trumpet but don't see any notes on the trumpet's staff, look at the vocal line, as the trumpet may be simply playing what would've been sung in the original opera.
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Ariane et Barbe-bleue (Ariadne and Bluebeard) is an opera in three acts by Paul Dukas. The French libretto is adapted (with very few changes) from the symbolist play of the same name by Maurice Maeterlinck, itself loosely based on the French literary tale La Barbe bleue by Charles Perrault.

Dukas had been impressed by Maeterlinck's play when it was first published in 1899. Maeterlinck had initially reserved the rights to use Ariane as a libretto for Edvard Grieg. When Grieg abandoned his plans to compose the opera, Maeterlinck offered it to Dukas instead. Dukas worked on the score between 1899 and 1906.

It received its first performance at the Opéra Comique in Paris, on 10 May 1907. Although it won considerable praise, its success was overshadowed by the Paris premiere of Richard Strauss's sensational opera Salome at much the same time. None the less, within a short time of its premiere, Dukas's opera was produced in Vienna, where it aroused much interest in Schoenberg's circle, and in Frankfurt, Milan and New York. It did not maintain a regular place in the repertory, despite the advocacy of Arturo Toscanini, who conducted it in New York three years in succession, and Sir Thomas Beecham, who pronounced it "one of the finest lyrical dramas of our time," and staged it at Covent Garden in 1937. Interest in it revived in the 1990s, with productions in Paris (Théâtre du Châtelet, 1990) and Hamburg (Staatsoper, 1997), and at the Opéra Bastille in Paris in 2007.

Source: Wikipedia