The great Belgian composer César Franck wrote two operas during his adult life, both of which have been nearly totally ignored by opera and recording companies. If these two operas were worthless and terrible, perhaps there were good reasons for their banishment, but that is not the case. Basically, the world has never really been ready for Monsieur Franck, perhaps the greatest of French and Belgian composers. There are several very old complete recordings of Hulda that Franck composed between 1879 and 1885. But there are at the time of this writing no known recordings of Ghiselle, one of Franck’s last works, let alone video performances of either. Charles Van Den Borren wrote his book Hulda et Ghiselle in 1907 in support of these two suppressed masterpieces of music drama, and we present it here in our effort to further bring attention to the music of this great spiritual composer in a time when his music is most needed. (Don Robertson)