Clément Philibert Léo Delibes was a French composer born February 21, 1836, in Saint-Germain-du-Val, France. Admitted to the Paris Conservatoire in 1848, Delibes studied under Adolphe Adam and others, working as an organist and accompanist while composing comic operettas. He achieved success with the ballet La Source (1866), followed by Coppélia (1870) and Sylvia (1876). His stage compositions include Jean de Nivelle (1880), the opera Lakmé (1883)—which features the duet “Flower Duet”—and the unfinished Kassya. Delibes became a professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire in 1881 and was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1884. He died in Paris on January 16, 1891.
