Léo Delibes

克莱芒·菲利贝·莱奥·德利布（法语：Clément Philibert Léo Delibes，1836年2月21日－1891年1月16日），法国歌剧、芭蕾舞剧作曲家，同时也是一位管风琴家。
 
德利布出生于圣日尔曼迪瓦尔（即今日萨尔特省拉夫赖士），父亲是一个邮差，在他年幼时已过身；母亲则是业余的音乐演奏家，而祖父亦曾当过歌剧歌手，因此德利布自少便从家人中接触音乐。1847年他考入巴黎音乐学院，阿道夫·亚当学习作曲，当时也学习声乐和键盘。毕业后先后在国家歌剧院（Théâtre Lyrique）、巴黎歌剧院（Paris Opéra）、圣皮埃尔德夏尤教堂（Saint-Pierre-de-Chaillot）等担任合唱指挥、伴奏或风琴演奏手。1871年与莱昂蒂内（Léontine Estelle Denain）结婚。
 
德利布最著名的作品都是和舞台剧有关，他先后共完成了超过20出的歌剧和轻歌剧和三出芭蕾舞剧，他亦有创作艺术歌曲等作品，但室乐、管弦乐作品则近乎欠奉。当中以芭蕾舞剧《葛蓓莉娅》和《西尔维亚》，歌剧《拉克美》(Lakme)为他的代表作，其中的歌曲 Flower duet随着20世纪后期英国航空的广告歌而广为人知 。
 
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.&