From the Opera Lakme
Leo Delibes
1836-1891
Very often popular culture commandeers selections from classical music and inserts them in the most unexpected places. In film Platoon, 2001-A Space Odyssey and Apocalypse come to mind. My first introduction to opera, any opera, was Elmer Fudd’s lyrics of “Kill Da Wabbit” sung to “The ride of the Valkyries.” And in 1989 British Airlines used the “Flower Duet” in one of their advertisements to great success. How apropos that in the first act of the opera Lakme Gerald, a British army officer, hears Lakme and her servant singing the beautiful, “Flower Duet.”
