150 years later, Adèle Hugo’s scores finally played by an orchestra

Captivating and disconcerting, like a voice from beyond the grave, the music of Adèle Hugo finally rises. Music that she wrote and that she will never have seen played. More than a century after his death, his forgotten scores, modeled on the words of his father, finally land on orchestral stands. “It’s very touching, someone who writes a bit as an autodidact, there are the qualities of that which are invention, freshness, no barrier (…)”, explains Jean-François Verdier, artistic director of the Victor Hugo Franche-Comté orchestra.

A “wealth that absolutely had to be unearthed”

Adele was Victor Hugo’s other daughter. She languishes in exile with him. Cut off from the world, she writes and composes in family indifference. His scores fill old trunks that nobody cares about, until 150 years later, in 2004, the curator of the Hugo house-museum presents them to a composer. “I discovered a wealth that absolutely had to be unearthed and made known“, confides Richard Dubugnon, composer.