Philippe Jaroussky clearly subscribes to the habit-forming appeal of French art song, having titled his first recorded recital ‘Opium’, and now with a much larger and more ambitious two-disc set named after absinthe. Intoxicating? Utterly. Delirious? Not at all. Everything about this set – song selection, sequencing and lavish packaging – is meticulously thought out in what may be the single most appealing and important French song recital this side of the largely excellent but sometimes uneven Fauré and Debussy discs on Hyperion. At the outset, one must give up expectations of hearing the velvety tones of Gérard Souzay or Maggie Teyte. Jaroussky is best comparable to Natalie Dessay: the sound itself hasn’t great dimension but shows every sign of meeting the expressive demands of his considerable imagination – and with more confidence and precision than in the ‘Opium’ recital. But just as Jaroussky has clearly put much consideration and thought to this collection, so must the listener.

More popular Verlaine poems – ‘En sourdine’, ‘Clair de lune’, ‘Green’ and ‘Colloque sentimental’ – are heard in two or three versions. But since this is an album to be enjoyed rather than an academic exercise, sensible sequencing is the first priority and means that the different versions are sprinkled throughout the two discs. The booklet contains all text translations but they are printed in alphabetical order rather than in the order of the disc.

I skipped around the discs to hear the often diametrically opposed approaches to the same poem, frequently being torn between preferring one over the other, so convincing are so many of the songs on their own terms. Musical responses indeed depart from the composer’s better-known output: no flowing Auvergne melodies come from Canteloube in ‘Colloque sentimental’, a version that addresses the poem’s contrasting voices literally, though always poetically.

‘Prison’ shows Fauré dispensing with his usual veneer with unguarded expressions of unresolved anguish while Hahn concentrates on the exterior simplicity of the village life described in the poem. Koechlin’s version of ‘Il pleure dans mon coeur’ has eloquent simplicity and depth, though Schmitt maintains a questionably urbane surface while Debussy puts the song in a poetically ambiguous netherworld.

Certain patterns emerge: in the settings of ‘En sourdine’, Fauré frames his flowing word-settings with familiar musical devices (arpeggios, etc) while Debussy has vocal lines of a similar character but without any frame. Hahn brings back certain frames – even following ABA song format – but with a highly impressionistic eight-note ostinato that veers between major and minor in response to the opening line’s description of half lights.

Not everything is wonderful. The ‘Un grand sommeil noir’ setting by Varèse shows the composer as a flicker of his future self (it’s a student work). Nathalie Stutzmann’s cameo appearance in Massenet’s duet version of ‘La lune blanche’ brings welcome variety but her voice hardly matches with Jaroussky’s and the music itself is hardly Massenet’s best. Though Charles Trenet’s version of ‘Chanson d’automne’ is wilfully gauche (even changing Verlaine’s words), each CD ends with more successful pop-song versions of Verlaine, the best being Brassens’s ‘Colombine’.

Throughout, Jaroussky’s singing is immaculate, the singer and the song heard in a seamless bond, always beautifully supported by Jérôme Ducros with occasional string quartet arrangements of songs that tend to turn up the heat in the visual imagery, occasionally inspiring the Ebène Quartet towards jazzy Stéphane Grappelli-style fantasy. Some arrangements are credited to Jaroussky himself. Is that a good indication of how close this project is to his heart?