Léo Delibes

As a child Léo Delibes entered the Paris Conservatoire, where Adolphe Adam taught him composition. He later worked as an accompanist at the Théâtre-Lyrique, church organist and chorus master. Operettas made his name, but the ballet made his reputation. Coppélia was staged in 1870, and Sylvia followed in 1876; Tchaikovsky admired Sylvia enough to rank it, in a letter, above his own Swan Lake. Lakmé reached the Opéra-Comique in 1883 and contains the Flower Duet and the Bell Song. He became professor of composition at the Conservatoire and a member of the Institut de France, and died in Paris in 1891. He was born at Saint-Germain-du-Val to a mother who sang, and after the Conservatoire he took a post as chorus master at the Paris Opera in the 1860s; his first staged work, the one-act operetta Deux sous de charbon, dates from 1856, and the ballet La Source of 1866, written with Minkus, brought him public recognition. The Conservatoire professorship came in 1881 and election to the Academie des Beaux-Arts in 1884. He left a last opera, Kassya, unfinished, and is buried in the Montmartre cemetery. Jules Massenet completed the orchestration of Kassya, which was staged in 1893.