Programs · Episode

DELIBES: Lakmé

Program: At the Opera
Aired: Saturday, June 11, 2022 @ 6:00 pm
Hosted by Lisa Simeone

If you think you've never heard Delibes' strikingly beautiful Lakmé, think again — you've almost certainly heard at least part of it.  The famous, Act I "flower" duet turns up more often on TV commercials than in the opera house!  But there's far more to the opera than one, ubiquitous number.  AT THE OPERA samples two recordings, each featuring a French soprano who seems virtually ideal for the title role.  Natalie Dessay stars in a recording from 1997, with tenor Gregory Kunde.  And, from all the way back in 1970, it’s Mady Mesplé, with tenor Charles Burles.

FEATURED RECORDINGS:

Michel Plasson, conductor

Orchestra and Chorus of the Capitole of Toulouse

CAST:  Natalie Dessay (Lakmé); Gregory Kunde (Gerald); José Van Dam (Nilakantha); Delphine Haidan (Mallika); Franck Leguérinel (Frederic); Patricia Petibon (Ellen); Xenia Konsek (Rose); Charles Burles (Hadji); Bernadette Antoine (Mrs. Bentson)
(EMI 56569)

Alain Lombard, conductor

Orchestra and Chorus of the Opera-Comique, Paris

CAST:  Mady Mesplé (Lakmé); Charles Burles (Gerald); Roger Soyer (Nilakantha); Danielle Millet (Mallika); Jean-Christophe Benoit (Frederic); Bernadette Antoine (Ellen); Monique Linval (Rose); Joseph Peyron (Hadji); Anges Disney (Mrs. Bentson)(Erato/Warner 0190295734862)

MORE ABOUT THE OPERA:

Even people who say they never listen to classical music most likely encounter it nearly every day.

Tunes from the concert hall and the opera house often turn up in places where you might not expect them. In 1945, Frank Sinatra recorded the hit tune "Full Moon and Empty Arms."  Its soaring melody first appeared more than 40 years earlier, in Sergei Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto.

In 1953, Robert Wright and George Forrest had a Broadway hit with the musical Kismet. The show was adapted from the works of Russian composer Alexander Borodin, and one of its tunes tends to overshadow the others. The melody to the hit song "Strangers in Paradise" was originally a dance number in Borodin's historical opera Prince Igor.  After Forrest added the words, any number of singers took it up.  Alfred Drake sang it in the original cast, and Tony Bennett helped to make it a pop standard.

Still, there may be no classical tune, operatic or otherwise, that turns up in more varied places than the other-worldly "hit single" from this week's featured opera: Lakmé, by Leo Delibes.

In the drama's first act, with the story barely underway, the title character and one of her servants pause by a river to gather flowers. Delibes gave them a duet, to help establish the opera's exotic atmosphere, and that "Flower Duet" has become one of the most familiar numbers any composer, in any genre, has ever written.

You can hear it on television shows, as background music in elevators and shopping malls, in any number of "mood music" collections and even, unaccountably, in the soundtracks of a few horror movies.  It's also a natural for commercials.  A while back, it became a sort of TV theme song for British Airways ads — as the peaceful accompaniment to a jetliner floating through calm skies and wispy clouds.

Yet, in one way, the popularity of that one number may have been a disadvantage.  It tends to overshadow the opera itself, much of which shares the airy exoticism that makes the famous duet so memorable.

The story of the Brahmin girl Lakmé was based on a novel by Frenchman Pierre Loti, who had traveled in the Orient and brought back a number of exotic stories. Librettist Edmond Gondinet gave Delibes a copy of Loti's book, to pass the time on a train ride.  The composer loved it, and took about a year to compose the opera, which premiered in Paris in the spring of 1883.

The opera brings together many ingredients popular with opera-goers in the 1880s: an exotic location – already in vogue thanks to Bizet's The Pearl Fishers – plus mysterious religious rituals, the beautiful flora of the Orient and the general novelty of Western colonials living in a foreign land. Composers Jules Massenet and Giacomo Meyerbeer wrote operas with similar elements, and those dramas were also popular in Paris. With Lakmé, Delibes brought his audiences the entire package and, along with the ballet Coppelia, it brought the composer his most lasting fame.

On At the Opera, we’ll explore two recordings of Lakmé, each featuring a French soprano who seems virtually ideal for the title role.  Natalie Dessay stars with tenor Gregory Kunde in a 1997 release, and from 1970 we’ll hear Mady Mesplé with Charles Burles.

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