Léo Delibes

Léo Delibes elevated ballet composition to a level of seriousness rarely seen since Rameau, surpassing even his mentor Adolphe Adam in restoring the genre after its long decline. He created the first complete ballet score to receive the same meticulous attention long routine among leading opera composers, shaping buoyant and memorable melodies within vividly colored orchestral textures. Several operas also came from his pen, yet Lakmé remains the most familiar, thanks to its celebrated “Bell Song” and the widely performed “Flower Duet.”

His earliest musical training arrived from his mother, herself the daughter of a professional opera singer, and from her uncle, the organist Edouard Batiste. After his father’s death in 1847 the family settled in Paris, where Delibes entered the Paris Conservatory and studied with Adam. As a teenager he sang in the choir of Ste. Marie-Madeleine; in 1853 he was appointed organist at St. Pierre-de-Chaillot and, in the same year, became accompanist and chorus master at the Théâtre-Lyrique, assisting with productions of works by Gounod, Bizet, and Berlioz. A decade later he transferred to the same post at the Paris Opéra, continuing to serve as a church organist until 1871.

At first Delibes concentrated on buoyant operettas and comic pieces in the style of Offenbach, many staged at the Bouffes-Parisiens; the earliest, Deux sous de charbon, reached the stage in 1856. His initial large-scale ballet assignment arrived in 1866, when he joined Ludwig Minkus to compose La Source for the Opéra. The ballet’s success brought commissions for Coppélia (1870), drawn from an E.T.A. Hoffmann tale, and Sylvia (1876), based on a mythological subject. Both scores remain in the active repertory, and their graceful concert suites continue to be recorded, though less frequently than in earlier decades. Their deeper importance lies in the decisive influence they exerted on Tchaikovsky’s approach to symphonic ballet writing.

After his final operetta, L’écossais de Chatou, appeared in 1869, Delibes turned more steadily to opera. The chief results were the opéra comique Le Roi l’a dit (1873) and the more ambitious, exotic Lakmé (1883). The latter work owes its enduring popularity to its melodic appeal and to the vivid orchestral coloring that evokes the Asian setting. His sacred music and most of his songs have receded from view, with the single exception of Les Filles de Cadiz, whose Franco-Spanish flavor recalls Bizet’s Carmen. Recognition for his theatrical scores brought Delibes a professorship of composition at the Conservatory in 1881 and election to the French Institute in 1884. At his death in 1891 he left the opera Kassya fully sketched but unorchestrated; Massenet completed the scoring for the 1893 premiere.