Léo Delibes (1836–1891) was a French Romantic composer, best known for his ballets and operas. His works include the ballets Coppélia (1870) and Sylvia (1876), both of which were key works in the development of modern ballet and remain core works in the international ballet repertoire, and the opera Lakmé (1883), which includes the well-known “Flower Duet”. I say “well-known”; it’s possible that you know it without knowing you know it (although you may need to wait for the 1.05 minute mark before it clicks). Although Delibes’ name may be less famous today than other contemporary French composers such as Berlioz, Debussy or Ravel, the melody he has bequeathed is a gem.
Lakmé was Delibes’ attempt at a serious opera, having composed several light comic opérettes in the 1850s and 1860s. The opera combines many orientalist aspects that were popular at the time: an exotic location (similar to other French operas of the period, such as Bizet’s Les pêcheurs de perles and Massenet’s Le roi de Lahore), a fanatical priest, mysterious Hindu rituals, and “the novelty of exotically colonial English people”. The stuff that would probably discomfit modern sensibilities but which in 1883 was firmly de rigueur.
The opera includes the Flower Duet (“Sous le dôme épais”) for soprano and mezzo-soprano, performed in Act 1 by Lakmé, the daughter of a Brahmin priest, and her servant Mallika. Here we see it performed by soprano Sabine Devieilhe and mezzo-soprano Marianne Crebassa.
Incidentally, have you ever wondered how foreign language poems still rhyme when translated into English? Of course, this is where translation has to be creative in its own right. The Flower Duet provides a case in point. See how Theodore T Barker, in 1890, turned the original French lyrics into singable English, preserving the form and rhyme:
French lyrics
Viens, Mallika, les lianes en fleurs
Jettent déjà leur ombre
Sur le ruisseau sacré
qui coule, calme et sombre,
Eveillé par le chant des oiseaux tapageurs
Literal English
Come, Mallika, the flowering lianas
already cast their shadow
on the sacred stream
which flows, calm and dark,
awakened by the song of rowdy birds.
Singable English
Come, Mallika, the flowering vines
Their shadows now are throwing
Along the sacred stream,
That calmly here is flowing;
Enlivened by the songs of birds among the pines.
