Léo Delibes

Léo Delibes (b St Germain du Val, 21 Feb 1836; d Paris, 16 Jan 1891). French composer. His father was in the postal service, while his mother, an able musician, was the daughter of an opera singer and niece of the organist Edouard Batiste.

Léo, the only child, learnt music from his mother and uncle; after his father’s death in 1847 the family moved to Paris, where he entered Tariot’s class at the Conservatoire. He obtained a premier prix in solfège in 1850 and later studied the organ with Benoist and composition with Adolphe Adam. His Conservatoire career was without distinction, and he never entered for the Prix de Rome. He was a chorister at Ste Marie-Madeleine and sang as a boy in the première of Meyerbeer’s Le prophète at the Opéra in 1849. At the age of 17 he became organist of St Pierre-de-Chaillot and also accompanist at the Théâtre Lyrique. Although he remained a church organist until 1871, Delibes was clearly drawn more to the theatre. For a short time around 1858 he wrote criticism for the Gaulois hebdomadaire under the pseudonym Eloi Delbès, but he found his métier at Hervé’s highly successful Folies-Nouvelles, where in 1856 his first stage work was played. Deux sous de charbon, an ‘asphyxie lyrique’ in one act, was the first of his many light operettas, appearing henceforth roughly one a year for 14 years. Many were written for the Bouffes-Parisiens, Offenbach’s theatre, including his second piece, Deux vieilles gardes, which enjoyed enormous success, largely due to his gift for witty melody and lightness of touch.