Ecce Paris, Ecce Homo

The theme of childhood is omnipresent in Victor Hugo’s work: the witness to a miserable childhood, the admiring and tender father, the stubborn defender of universal education, all expressed in courageous works of remarkable moral and spiritual elevation. This cantata evokes three aspects of childhood dear to Victor Hugo. The Parisian boy of Les Misérables is embodied in the person of Gavroche, a mischievous and ironic child who dies singing, while in the second part it is the happy childhood of his two daughters that the author evokes with tenderness. The desire for universal education, the remedy for all the ills of society and all forms of obscurantism, is expressed in the third part, prophetically summed up by the final line: “Every child we teach is a man we win”.
Olivier Calmel