BaL 7.12.19 - Delibes: Lakmé

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Building a Library: Flora Wilson chooses her favourite recording of Delibes' opera Lakme.
Written in the early 1880s and set in the British India of the mid-19th century, Lakmé is based on the novel Le Mariage de Loti by Pierre Loti. The opera includes the ever-popular Flower Duet sung by Lakmé, the daughter of a Brahmin priest, and her servant Mallika. It's most famous aria is the Bell Song in Act 2. Like other French operas of the 19th Century, Lakmé projects a view of the Orient seen through Western eyes. However as a piece of well-crafted escapism with gorgeous tunes and lavish scenic backdrop it is an opera well worth discovering.

Available recordings:-

Joan Sutherland, Alain Vanzo, Gabriel Bacquier, Emile Belcourt, Jane Berbié, Monte Carlo Opera, Richard Bonynge

Denise Boursin, Alain Vanzo, Pierre Savignol, Agnes Disney, Pierre-Michel Leconte

Mady Mesplé, Danielle Millet, Charles Burles, Roger Soyer, Jean-Christophe Benoit, Bernadette Antoine, Monique Linval, Agnès Disney, Joseph Peyron, Chœurs et Orchestre du Théâtre National de l’Opéra-Comique, Alain Lombard

George Cehanovsky, Irra Petina, Annamary Dickey, Lily Pons, Lucielle Browning, Ezio Pinza, Armand Tokatyan, Helen Olheim, Nicholas Massue, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera Chorus, Wilfrid Pelletier *

Alessandra Ruffini, Giuseppe Morino, Bruno Pratico, Orchestra Internazionale d'Italia, Coro da Camera di Bratislava, Carlos Piantini

Natalie Dessay, Gregory Kunde, José van Dam, Delphine Haida, Franck Leguérinel, Patricia Petibon, Xenia Konsek, Orchestre Du Capitole De Toulouse, Michel Plasson

Mado Robin, Agnes Disney, Claudine Collart, Simone Lemaître, Libero de Luca, Jean Borthayre, Jacques Jansen, Pierre Germain, Jane Perriat, Edmond Chastenet, Camille Rouquett, Chorus and Orchestra of the Opéra-Comique, Paris, Georges Sébastian *


* = download only

[Pulcinella]

Building a Library: Flora Wilson chooses her favourite recording of Delibes' opera Lakme.
Written in the early 1880s and set in the British India of the mid-19th century, Lakmé is based on the novel Le Mariage de Loti by Pierre Loti. The opera includes the ever-popular Flower Duet sung by Lakmé, the daughter of a Brahmin priest, and her servant Mallika. It's most famous aria is the Bell Song in Act 2. Like other French operas of the 19th Century, Lakmé projects a view of the Orient seen through Western eyes. However as a piece of well-crafted escapism with gorgeous tunes and lavish scenic backdrop it is an opera well worth discovering.

The BBC website intern has clearly been let loose again.

[MickyD]

I saw a young Natalie Dessay sing this enchantingly at Marseille Opera some twenty odd years ago. Her recording of it is very fine to my ears.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The BBC website intern has clearly been let loose again.

[mikealdren]

Only 7 recordings, I wonder how many they will consider on their shortlist.

[Master Jacques]

Lakmé projects a view of the Orient seen through Western eyes. However as a piece of well-crafted escapism with gorgeous tunes and lavish scenic backdrop it is an opera well worth discovering.

This is entirely rubbish - nobody who has seen the opera could utter such condescending, penny-in-slot nonsense.

The hero/anti-hero is a sort of British officer equivalent to Lt. Pinkerton, two-timing his British fiancée - who also appears in the opera, with her governess and siblings. As you would expect from a French writer of the time, the opera is a serious critique of British rule in India, the occupiers' lack of understanding of the caste system in general, and the sanctity of the Brahmins in particular. The Brits are mercilessly mocked, as comic characters. The climax comes with an Indian revolt and the end is devastatingly tragic.

At least - all these things are apparent to anyone who might actually care to pay attention to this glorious opera, instead of coming out with the usual insulting tosh about how 19th c. colonials couldn't possibly understand the "real" India. Loti did, Mr Intern: you see, unlike you, he'd been there and spent two years seeing British rule for himself! I despair...

My clear choice, by the way, is the Mado Robin/Georges Sébastian recording - which is readily available on NAXOS CD, by the way, not only as a download. If you want an uncut, classic version though the EMI Mesplé/Burles/Lombard set runs it close. Avoid La Stupenda!

Doubtless Ms Willson will also be watching the various DVD versions, and padding the banter with extracts from those too.

[vinteuil]

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... my understanding was that Delibes' Lakmé [1883] was based on Loti's Rarahu (le Mariage de Loti) of 1880, based on his 1872 experiences in Tahiti. I don't think Loti at that time had had much experience of British India : his visits to India date from 1899/1900

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Loti

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Mariage_de_Loti

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[Master Jacques]

... my understanding was that Delibes' Lakmé [1883] was based on Loti's Rarahu (le Mariage de Loti) of 1880, based on his 1872 experiences in Tahiti. I don't think Loti at that time had had much experience of British India : his visits to India date from 1899/1900.

You are quite right - I'd mixed my dates, adding 2+2 to make five. Apologies for misleading anyone.

Still, the opera libretto - which had a second primary source in Théodore Pavie's novella Les babouches du Brahamane (he was a journalist like Loti, and had most certainly been in India before the early 1880's) is most definitely not soft-centred orientalism, from a Western point of view, but makes points which were unpalatable enough about the British in India.

[vinteuil]

Still, the opera libretto - which had a second primary source in Théodore Pavie's novella Les babouches du Brahamane (he was a journalist like Loti, and had most certainly been in India before the early 1880's) is most definitely not soft-centred orientalism, from a Western point of view, but makes points which were unpalatable enough about the British in India.

... aha, now this is interesting. I didn't know about Pavie - but it looks as if he should be given more credit :

https://academic.oup.com/oq/article-abstract/12/4/19/1603680?redirectedFrom=PDF

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https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%A9odore_Pavie

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[Master Jacques]

... aha, now this is interesting. I didn't know about Pavie - but it looks as if he should be given more credit :

https://academic.oup.com/oq/article-abstract/12/4/19/1603680?redirectedFrom=PDF

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%A9odore_Pavie

Most interesting article indeed, vinteuil, and thank you for the link. Pavie should be acknowledged as the primary source, without a doubt. I suspect the desire to evoke the more famous writer - when after all, the Loti novel does have a generic bearing on the opera's love story, if little else - trumped accuracy. Another reason Record Review ought to take down that dreadfully misleading nonsense!

The same sort of confusion surrounds the literary background to Madama Butterfly, but that's another story (and one without a French ballet!)

[Darloboy]

Only 7 recordings, I wonder how many they will consider on their shortlist.

Still more than most of the musicals that BaL covers. I don’t actually recall this opera having been covered in BaL before - it definitely hasn’t in the last 30 years - so I think it deserves a comprehensive survey.

[mikealdren]

Still more than most of the musicals that BaL covers. I don’t actually recall this opera having been covered in BaL before - it definitely hasn’t in the last 30 years - so I think it deserves a comprehensive survey.

I think all works deserve a comprehensive survey, that's where RR has lost its way recently.

[Master Jacques]

I think all works deserve a comprehensive survey, that's where RR has lost its way recently.

RR will always have a duty to revisit the so-called "core classics", though: the problem is, that they've recently been doing that so badly, for reasons well-discussed here.

[Barbirollians]

Thanks for all the fascinating background about the work.

I have the Mesple /Lombard highlights CD - I had the Sutherland but it was lost in a burglary in 1999. I never felt the need to replace it .

[Master Jacques]

... I had the Sutherland but it was lost in a burglary in 1999. I never felt the need to replace it .

No indeed. I have a vision of an international gang, targeting box sets of La Stupenda, doggedly tracked by Interpol...