Gondinet gave Delibes a copy of Loti's novel, to read on a train ride, and Delibes loved it. Gondinet wanted to write a libretto specifically for a young American soprano named Marie van Zandt who had starred in another French opera, Ambroise Thomas's Mignon, in 1880. Librettist Edmond Gondinet suggested the story to composer Leo Delibes. Tenor Frederic Antoun and soprano Aline Kutan play the ill-fated, cross-cultural lovers in Leo Delibes's opera Lakme.īACKGROUND: The story of the Brahmin girl Lakme was based on a novel by Frenchman Pierre Loti, who had traveled in the Orient and brought back stories filled with exoticism. 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, Lakme by Leo Delibes. Alfred Drake sang it in the original cast, and Tony Bennett helped to make it a pop standard.
After Forrest added the words, any number of singers took it up. The melody to the hit song "Strangers in Paradise" was originally a dance number in Borodin's historical opera Prince Igor. The show was adapted from the works of Russian composer Alexander Borodin, and one of its tunes tends to overshadow the others. In 1953, Robert Wright and George Forrest had a Broadway hit with the musical Kismet. Its soaring melody first appeared more than 40 years earlier, in Sergei Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto.
In 1945, Frank Sinatra recorded the hit tune "Full Moon and Empty Arms" - which you can listen to right here if it doesn't immediately come to mind.
Tunes from the concert hall and the opera house often turn up in places where you might not expect them. Even people who say they never listen to classical music most likely encounter it nearly every day.
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