"What do you see, Frederick ?" "A garden." "And you, Gerald ?" "Big, beautiful trees." "Anybody about ?" "Don't know." "Look again." "That's not easy; the fence shuts out the view within." "Can't you make a peephole through the bamboo ?" "Girls, girls, be careful." And so on and so on for quantity.

But we must fill three acts, and ensemble makes its demands; besides, we want pretty blondes of the English type to put in contrast with the dark-skinned Lakme and her slave.

At the first representation in New York by the American Opera Company, at the Academy of Music, on March 1, 1886, the three women were permitted to interfere with what there is of poetical spirit in the play, and their conversation, like that of the other principals, was uttered in the recitatives composed by Delibes to take the place of the spoken dialogue used at the Paris Opera Comique, where spoken dialogue is traditional.

Theodore Thomas conducted the Academy performance, at which the cast was as follows: Lakme, Pauline L'Allemand; Nilakantha, Alonzo E.Stoddard; Gerald, William Candidus; Frederick, William H.Lee; Ellen, Charlotte Walker; Rose, Helen Dudley Campbell; Mrs.Bentson, May Fielding; Mallika, Jessie Bartlett Davis; Hadji, William H.Fessenden.
Few operas have had a more variegated American history than "Lakme." It was quite new when it was first heard in New York, but it had already given rise to considerable theatrical gossip, not to say scandal.

The first representation took place at the Opera Comique in April, 1883, with Miss Marie Van Zandt, an American girl, the daughter of a singer who had been actively successful in English opera in New York and London, as creator of the part of the heroine.