believes to be the arch enemy of his native land, and, like her,
she is the means of betraying him into the hands of the avenger.
Like the heroine of Meyerbeer's posthumous opera, she has a fatal
acquaintance with tropical botany and uses her knowledge to her own
destruction. Her scientific attainments are on about the same plane
as her amiability, her abnormal sense of filial duty, and her
musical accomplishments. She loves a man whom her father wishes her
to lure to his death by her singing, and she sings entrancingly
enough to bring about the meeting between her lover's back and her
father's knife. That she does not warble herself into the position
of "particeps criminis" in a murder she owes only to the bungling
of the old man. Having done this, however, she turns physician and
nurse and brings the wounded man back to health, thus sacrificing
her love to the duty which her lover thinks he owes to the invaders
of her country and oppressors of her people. After this she makes
the fatal application of her botanical knowledge. Such things come
about when one goes to India for an operatic heroine.

The feature of the libretto which Delibes has used to the best
purpose is its local color. His music is saturated with the
languorous spirit of the East. Half a dozen of the melodies are
lovely inventions, of marked originality in both matter and
treatment, and the first half hour of the opera is apt to take
one's fancy completely captive. The drawback lies in the oppressive
weariness which succeeds the first trance, and is brought on by the
monotonous character of the music. After an hour of "Lakme" one
yearns for a few crashing chords of C major as a person enduring
suffocation longs for a gush of fresh air. The music first grows
monotonous, then wearies. Delibes's lyrical moments show the most
numerous indications of beauty; dramatic life and energy are absent