Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Delibes: Lakmé

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

The hint for this Sunday's programming comes from one of Robert E. Smith's installments of "Your Box at the Opera." On Sunday, September 6, 1985, I rebroadcast some of the airtapes of his "Your Box at the Opera" installments--one in particular which originally went over the air on WTIC-AM on March 9, 1969. I was granted access to exclusive cassette tape recordings residing in UHart's Allen Memorial Library of the Julius Hartt College of Music. These half-hour radio shows about opera singers were hosted by a now historic figure in the history of local radio broadcasting.

Mr. Smith reviewed a recording of soprano Joan Sutherland's voice in the title role in Léo Delibes's Lakmé (1883), as issued on LP under the London label here in the US. Many great singers have used "The Bell Song" from Lakmé as a vehicle for their vocal artistry. Sutherland, the diva assoluta, went so far as to revive the entire opera. This opera had hitherto gone unsung for a long time. It had been favorably received at its premiere at the Paris Opera Comique. It remained standard repertoire in France thereafter, but not so on the international operatic scene in the twentieth century. In Lakmé, Léo Delibes reached the apex of his career as a composer. He's better known for his ballet music for Coppélia and Sylvia. Delibes also wrote a string of successful French musical comedies. Some French music critics of his day thought he was Offenbach's true successor.

Lakmé. however, is a lyric tragedy with an exotic setting, and Delibes's music expresses its exoticism. Its scoring is sensuous, a thing of rare beauty like a tropical flower for the ear to hear in its entirety. Lakmé herself is a kind of Madame Butterfly of the Indian subcontinent. For true love she commits suicide by partaking in a draught of poison. In my broadcast of Lakmé on Sunday, November 8, 1987 I presented Sutherland opposite tenor Alain Vanzo as Gerald, with Sutherland's husband Richard Bonynge conducting the Monte Carlo Opera Orchestra and Chorus.

Lakmé received a new recorded treatment in 1997, this time with the highly esteemed Natalie Dessay in the title role. Michel Plasson directs the Orchestra and Chorus du Capitole de Toulouse. Also heard as Nilakantha is tenor Jose Van Dam. EMI issued this latter-day Lakmé on two compact discs in 1998.