The Franck bicentenary last year saw something of a resurgence of interest in Hulda, his third opera, completed in 1885, unperformed in his lifetime and only premiered, heavily cut, in Monte Carlo in 1894. Bru Zane’s new recording is actually the second to appear in 18 months, and according to a booklet note by Alexandre Dratwicki, was made in acknowledgement of the achievement of its predecessor, Fabrice Bollon’s Freiburg version for Naxos. Pioneering though it was, the latter left something to be desired both in terms of performance (Meagen Miller was brave but taxed in the title-role) and presentation (inadequate notes, a sketchy synopsis and the libretto only in German, bizarrely). The new set, inevitably perhaps, is something of an improvement.

It comes with plenty of scholarly material, detailing much about the opera’s genesis, reception and history that hitherto remained obscure. There’s a perceptive essay on the score, written at the time of the premiere, by Franck’s younger contemporary Alfred Bruneau, while Dratwicki fascinatingly posits the idea that Hulda was in part suppressed by Franck’s pupils in an attempt to foster the idea of his being a high-minded composer of absolute music, indifferent to anything so apparently worldly as opera. We’re also better able to assess the strengths and weaknesses of Charles Grandmougin’s libretto, based on a revenge tragedy by the Norwegian playwright Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, its flowery language occasionally at odds with the subject’s brutality.

The recording, made in tandem with performances in Liège, Paris and Namur last year, is by and large more consistent than the earlier set. Gergely Madaras is the subtler conductor of the two, his attention to detail helped immeasurably by his Liège orchestra, more transparent in sound than their weightier Freiburg counterparts. Franck’s debt to Wagner in terms of harmonic language and sonority is duly acknowledged here, without losing sight of the fact that this is still essentially a French grand opéra, structurally gravitating towards set-piece arias and ensembles. When we come to the choral singing, however, there are moments when we need the greater density of Bollon’s forces. The Namur Chamber Choir sing with unfailing beauty, commitment and accuracy but sometimes sound too few in number: Bollon’s tenors and basses, massed and roaring, are altogether more terrifying as the appalling Aslak clan when they are baying for blood.

Jennifer Holloway is magnificent in the immense title-role here, if occasionally steely in tone, marvellously alert to the text (unlike with Miller, you can hear every word), and superb in her delineation of Hulda’s transformation from victim to monster as her desire for revenge on her family’s murderers becomes ever more indiscriminate. Edgaras Montvidas, sounding really sexy, plays Eiolf, the unheroic hero, as a dithering sensualist and is preferable to Bollon’s less charismatic Joshua Kohl, and Judith van Wanroij does wonders as the enigmatic Swanhilde, a complex figure, at once innocent and calculating, not unlike Debussy’s Mélisande. Matthieu Lécroart makes a terrific Gudleik, impassioned, stroppy and very dangerous indeed, while Véronique Gens is impeccable, as one might expect, as the Aslak matriarch Gudrun: we’re occasionally aware, though, that this is a soprano singing a mezzo role, and you may prefer Katerina Hebelková, majestic in the Rita Gorr mould for Bollon. Despite its occasional flaws, this is a fine achievement, and well worth hearing.