Duo des fleurs (Lakmé)

Delibes wrote Lakmé between 1881 and 1882 to a libretto by Edmond Gondinet and Philippe Gille, drawing on Pierre Loti's Le Mariage de Loti and a story by Théodore Pavie. Gondinet proposed the piece as a vehicle for the American soprano Marie van Zandt, who sang the first performance at the Opéra-Comique on 14 April 1883. The exoticism of the score is French rather than Indian, an invention of harmony and orchestral colour. Its two best-known pages, the flower duet and the Bell Song, have been detached from the opera for so long that most listeners meet them without the plot.