Léo Delibes

克萊芒·菲利貝·萊奧·德利布（法語：Clément Philibert Léo Delibes，1836年2月21日－1891年1月16日），法國歌劇、芭蕾舞劇作曲家，同時也是一位管風(fēng)琴家。
 
德利布出生于圣日爾曼迪瓦爾（即今日薩爾特省拉夫賴士），父親是一個郵差，在他年幼時已過身；母親則是業(yè)余的音樂演奏家，而祖父亦曾當過歌劇歌手，因此德利布自少便從家人中接觸音樂。1847年他考入巴黎音樂學(xué)院，阿道夫·亞當學(xué)習(xí)作曲，當時也學(xué)習(xí)聲樂和鍵盤。畢業(yè)后先后在國家歌劇院（Théâtre Lyrique）、巴黎歌劇院（Paris Opéra）、圣皮埃爾德夏尤教堂（Saint-Pierre-de-Chaillot）等擔任合唱指揮、伴奏或風(fēng)琴演奏手。1871年與萊昂蒂內(nèi)（Léontine Estelle Denain）結(jié)婚。
 
德利布最著名的作品都是和舞臺劇有關(guān)，他先后共完成了超過20出的歌劇和輕歌劇和三出芭蕾舞劇，他亦有創(chuàng)作藝術(shù)歌曲等作品，但室樂、管弦樂作品則近乎欠奉。當中以芭蕾舞劇《葛蓓莉婭》和《西爾維亞》，歌劇《拉克美》(Lakme)為他的代表作，其中的歌曲 Flower duet隨著20世紀后期英國航空的廣告歌而廣為人知 。
 
Clément Philibert Léo Delibes (21 February 1836 – 16 January 1891) was a French composer of ballets, operas, and other works for the stage. His most notable works include ballets Coppélia (1870) and Sylvia (1876) as well as the operas Le roi l'a dit (1873) and Lakmé (1883).
 
Léo Delibes was born in Saint-Germain-du-Val, now part of La Flèche (Sarthe), France, in 1836. His father was a mailman, his mother a talented amateur musician. His grandfather had been an opera singer. He was raised mainly by his mother and uncle following his father's early death. In 1871, at the age of 35, the composer married Léontine Estelle Denain. His brother Michel Delibes migrated to Spain; he was the grandfather of Spanish writer Miguel Delibes.
 
Starting in 1847, Delibes studied composition at the Paris Conservatoire as a student of Adolphe Adam. A year later he began taking voice lessons, though he would end up a much better organ player than singer. He held positions as a rehearsal accompanist and chorus master at the Théâtre Lyrique, as second chorus master at the Paris Opéra (in 1864), and as organist at Saint-Pierre-de-Chaillot (1865–71). The first of his many operettas was Deux sous de charbon, ou Le suicide de Bigorneau (&Two sous-worth of coal&), written in 1856 for the Folies-Nouvelles.
 
A ceremonial cantata, Algers, for Napoleon III on the theme of Algiers, brought him to official attention; a collaboration with Léon Minkus resulted, in which his contribution of an act's worth of musical numbers for a ballet La source (1866) brought him into the milieu of ballet. Delibes achieved true fame in 1870 with the success of his ballet Coppélia; its title referred to a mechanical dancing doll that distracts a village swain from his beloved and appears to come to life. His other ballet is Sylvia (1876). It has been suggested that he also wrote the ballet music for Gounod's &Faust& which had been inserted ten years after the original performance of the opera.
 
Delibes also composed various operas, the last of which, the lush orientalizing Lakmé (1883), contains, among many dazzling numbers, the famous coloratura showpiece known as the Légende du Paria or Bell Song (&Où va la jeune Indoue?&) and The Flower Duet (&Sous le dôme épais&), a barcarolle that Patricia Rozema made famous in her film &I've Heard the Mermaids Singing& and later used by British Airways commercials. At the time, his operas impressed Tchaikovsky enough for the composer to rate Delibes more highly than Brahms—although this may seem faint praise when one considers that the Russian composer considered Brahms &a giftless bastard.&
 
In 1867 Delibes composed the divertissement Le jardin animé for a revival of the Joseph Mazilier/Adolphe Adam ballet Le corsaire. He wrote a mass, his Messe brève, and composed operettas almost yearly and occasional music for the theater, such as dances and antique airs for Victor Hugo's Le roi s'amuse, the play that Verdi turned into Rigoletto. Some musicologists believe that the ballet in Gounod's Faust was actually composed by Delibes.
 
Delibes died in in Paris in 1891, at the age of 54. He was buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre in Paris. Delibes' work is known to have been a great influence on composers such as Tchaikovsky, Saint-Saëns and Debussy. His ballet Sylvia was of special interest to Tchaikovsky, who wrote of Delibes' score: &. . . 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.&