Histoire De Melody Nelson &amp; L'Enfant Assassin Des Mouches, Barbican, London <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

British acts, French polish

Throughout the second half of the Sixties and well into the Seventies, French pop stars like Johnny Hallyday and Eddy Mitchell often used British musicians to try and keep their recordings sounding current. The maverick Serge Gainsbourg even began Histoire De Melody Nelson in London with the arranger, conductor and composer Jean-Claude Vannier in 1970 before completing the concept album in Paris the following year. The two also collaborated on L'Enfant Assassin Des Mouches, a 1972 curio rediscovered by producer and remixer Andy Votel, and re-released on his Finders Keepers label to great critical acclaim last year.

So all this is why the ambitious, one-off performance of both albums, part of the Only Connect series, took place in London rather Paris. Having dismissed Gainsbourg as the roué who led Jane Birkin astray with the suggestive chart-topper "Je T'Aime...Moi Non Plus" in 1969, the Brits developed a fascination for the enfant terrible of French pop after his death in 1991. Sampling, easy listening and the interest in exotica all fed into the myth and made A Fistful Of Gitanes, Sylvie Simmons' excellent biography of Gainsbourg, an unlikely best-seller in 2001.

The pivotal Histoire De Melody Nelson wasn't a major success on its release but has become the equivalent of the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds in the Francophile canon, though, of course, it was inspired by Birkin, a very English muse. Performed live in its entirety for the first time, it held up surprisingly well 35 years on, despite the absence of its creator.

Jarvis Cocker, the Pulp frontman who now resides in Paris and still looks like a bookish rive gauche student, set the scene with the "Melody" recitative, while Vannier conducted the BBC Concert Orchestra, and a crack band of session men, featuring Big Jim Sullivan and Vic Flick, reprised their much-sampled contributions.

Herbie Flowers then plucked the distinctive bass-intro to "Ballade Of Melody Nelson", but Badly Drawn Boy rather struggled with the album's catchiest song. Still, the legendary French chanteuse Brigitte Fontaine, with "Valse De Melody", and Gruff Rhys, for "Ah! Melody", recovered the magic of the original, the Super Furry Animals frontman caressing the vocal like Gainsbourg seducing a nymphet. The lush orchestrations, part David Axelrod, part Norman Whitfield, obviously influenced the work of Etienne Daho and Air, two French acts who have found favour in the UK in recent years.

Mick Harvey, of Bad Seeds fame, delivered a suitably louche "Hotel Particulier" in two languages, before Seaming To wailed her way through the trippy, fuzzy, sleazy grooves of "En Melody". "Cargo Culte", the finale, had Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier and the Crouch End Festival Chorus soaring to the heavens to match the heroine's tragic destiny.

As the cast took a bow, Vannier reminded the audience that they had performed the encores at the beginning of the first half. The conductor and arranger had indeed reprised various selections from his repertoire early on, including the themes to Cannabis and Slogan, two Gainsbourg-Birkin film vehicles from 1970 and 1969 respectively.

L'Enfant Assassin Des Mouches may have earned cult status thanks to its rarity but was more performance art than psychedelic revelation, though the 40 or so members of the Chorus rhythmically pressing on aerosol cans, the 55 musicians all waving handkerchiefs and teenager Marcel Valty sniping away at thin air with scissors made for an intriguing spectacle. Surrounded by an array of devices - metronomes, an anvil, a blender, a Singer sewing machine - Michel Musseau even ran on the spot in a miked-up box of sand and showed everyone where Matmos got their ideas from. But I still think Ceremony: An Electronic Mass by Spooky Tooth & Pierre Henry has the edge when it comes to Anglo-French collaborations.