Marc, right down here in little San Juan?
Iguanas has sold about six copies.
Look, I knew that would happen. It shouldn’t rankle, but it does; I should rise above it, content in knowing that I produced a book that, if not read, at least is well-written. James’s work has not been uniformly well-received. But who knows? Maybe they’re great; books that are popular more often than not are also good.
So, as penance, I offer the following; it appears that James has done a good deed: she’s introduced a whole bunch of people to classical music. So much so that there’s even an album out of the music about which she wrote. (As well, there appears to be a movie or movies in the making….) OK, so that’s worth checking out, right?
Well, Amazon has the CD, and there are fifteen tracks, fifteen really great pieces of music. So let’s spend time with each track, look at the composer, and explore a bit more his work or the work of his contemporaries.
Right—track number 1, the Flower Duet from Lakmé, by Léo Delibes.
Well, it’s sufficiently obscure that the computer didn’t know “Lakmé”—that old red squiggle—but did recognize Delibes. Why?
He was big in the 19th century, where, according to Wikipedia, he influenced guys like Saint-Saëns, Debussy, and Tchaikovsky. Actually, Tchaikovsky thought Delibes was greater than Brahms, though Tchaikovsky also had a bee in his bonnet about the composer; he called Brahms a “gift-less bastard.” But Tchaikovsky went on to say, about a ballet that no one, to my knowledge sees or listens to, “... what charm, what wealth of melody! It brought me to shame, for had I known of this music, I would have never written Swan Lake."
OK—so who was Delibes? French, 1836-1891, the son of a postman, the great-uncle of the Spanish writer Miguel Delibes. He studied at the Paris Conservatory under Adolphe Adam, who, like Delibes, principally composed for the theater and ballet. (Adam, by the way, wrote O Holy Night, the Christmas carol that gets trotted out regularly….)
And Delibes follows in his teacher’s footsteps, writing ballet scores for Coppélia and Sylvia. But he also wrote an opera, Lakmé, which is a rich, atmospheric setting of an Oriental tale. And it’s from Lakmé that James takes her first selection, the Flower Duet, or Dome epais le jasmine. Right—so what’s it all about?
Ummm—look, let’s be real. There are some operas that are less about the plot than the atmosphere. I saw Lakmé years ago, read the synopsis, rubbed my eyes, and tried the synopsis again. Then I decided—it’s better not to know. Sit back, look at the costumes, enjoy the music, admire the set. But don’t try to make anything of the libretto.
Briefly, however, Lakmé, daughter of the high priest of a sacred Brahmin temple, and her servant Mallika are left behind at the river while the men go to perform mysterious rites in the temple. See? This stuff happens in a certain kind of opera. So they amuse themselves gathering flowers…..
Juicy little stuff, hunh? Well, in my mind this duet is paired with another duet, just as beautiful, just as lush, and with a libretto just as silly. Oh, and also by a French composer of the 19th century, Georges Bizet, whose most famous work is the opera Carmen. But he also wrote another opera, The Pearl Fishers, or Les pêcheurs de perles.
Here again,
the libretto isn’t the most substantial part of the opera—it’s about two men,
good friends, whose friendship is threatened by their love of the same woman.
And in this famous aria, Au fond du temple saint, we are once again at a temple, and the
men are swearing eternal friendship.
Both pieces
are just on the edge, dangerously close to being maudlin and sentimental and
overblown. Look, I never seek it out, I never get up in the morning and say,
“hey, why don’t I listen to Au fond or the flower duet….”
But if they
come upon me, in a concert or a television program?
I just love
the stuff….
