It is a testimony to the strength of Akers’ technique and interpretative gift that she avoids these pitfalls and forges the album in her own style, re-investing these chansons with originality and insight. It is no less a tribute to the quality of Akers’ French, which sounds both natural and comfortable throughout. One major innovation on Akers’ part is to have slowed the tempo sufficiently to convert the original plangent urgency of Piaf’s recordings into a more stately, reflective oeuvre.

In so doing, two effects are achieved; the songs, some of whose lyrics might be thought sentimental and lightweight, acquire a more intellectual (left-bank?) air and so sit happily alongside the slightly more serious songs by Barbara and Jacques Brel. The second effect is to cast a hint of Broadway neon on these traditionally Parisian treasures, rendering them more accesible to a wider audience. To further this accessibility, Akers provides an English precis of the songs’ contents. In cabaret, Akers uses hand gestures to illuminate the French words, having first employed them in her English summaries. Whilst her written translations can’t enhance the mood of the performance in quite the same way, they do remain true to the spirit of the original material, much of which can sound mundane when translated literally.

One disadvantage of using the slower tempo is that a song like ‘Milord’, whose jaunty refrain contrasts ironically with the sense of loneliness and isolation of the song’s two characters, seems to lose more than it gains. On the other hand, Akers’ searing rendition of Brel’s ‘La Chanson Des Vieux Amants’ is breathtakingly beautiful, whilst the magnificent poetry of ‘J’attendrai’ is brought into sharp focus.

Akers has recorded an album that will appeal both to those who are aficionados of French music and to those to whom it has long been a closed book. In so doing, communicating and enlightening through the medium of song, she has performed one more of those acts of cabaret magic.