The only one of Victor Hugo’s five children to outlive him was Adèle, whose own story was tragic: she was institutionalised for more than half her long life, afflicted by mental illness that had manifested itself first and most notoriously in her obsessive unrequited love for a British army officer, whom she followed to Nova Scotia and then Barbados. What was not known until recently, though, was that she wrote music, often setting words by her father. Working from manuscripts unearthed in her family homes, the composer Richard Dubugnon has orchestrated 14 of her songs, and his instrumentations lend an idiomatic, sometimes colourful, often mellow slant to some appealing melodies.
Not all of those melodies bring much insight to her father’s poetry, but half a dozen leading French singers do their impressive best to bring songs to life, including Sandrine Piau, who lights up a breathlessly nostalgic monologue for the student Jean Prouvaire from Les Misérables, and Laurent Naouri, who leads the Dijon Opera chorus in a Hymne des Transportés that seems to be channelling Verdi’s Va Pensiero. There are also five instrumental solos with piano, in which players from the Besançon-based Orchestre Victor Hugo make something winning of slender material. No masterpieces here, but some interesting curiosities.
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