She made her debut in France in the title role of Delibes's Lakmé, at the Opéra de Rennes, which she has sung at St Etienne, Bielefeld, Rouen and the Cairo Opera House.
Already she had been moved from sources as varied as Musorgsky in Boris Godunov, Lassus, and Delibes in the “Bell Song” from Lakmé, but also Debussy in Pelléas et Mélisande has suggested a prosody that reframes the pulse, whereby she alters the tempo of the beat places notes in unsuspected groupings within the beat, creating her characteristic wave rhythm.
Koldenhoven is known globally for her featured soprano vocal solo "Aria" in Yanni Live at the Acropolis, adapted from the Delibes opera Lakmé and seen by over 1.5 Billion worldwide.
Like other French operas of the period, Lakmé captures the ambience of the Orient seen through Western eyes, which was periodically in vogue during the latter part of the nineteenth century and in line with other operatic works such as Bizet's The Pearl Fishers and Massenet's Le roi de Lahore.
Lakme started as a 100% subsidiary of Tata Oil Mills (Tomco), part of the Tata Group; it was named after the French opera Lakmé, which itself is the French form of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, also renowned for her beauty.
Two years later, he directed his first production at the Sydney Opera House with Lakmé.
Finally in 1917, Akhundzadeh's Zulmun natijasi ("The Consequence of Evil"; based on Léo Delibes's opera Lakmé) was staged at the Taghiyev Theatre in Baku (nowadays Azerbaijan State Theatre of Musical Comedy).
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.
However, it is her recording of Lakmé, opposite Charles Burles and Roger Soyer, under Alain Lombard, that will forever be remembered.
She remained committed to that house through 1920 where her other roles included Adina in L'elisir d'amore, Amina in La sonnambula, Elvira in I puritani, Gilda in Rigoletto, Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia, and the title roles in Lakmé and Mireille.
His roles at the Opéra-Comique included; Figaro, Lescaut, Zurga, Frédéric, Ourrias, Dapertutto, Alfio, Marcello, Scarpia, et al., he took part there in the creation of Emmanuel Bondeville's Madame Bovary, on 1 June 1951.
In addition to the "One Fine Day" track being selected as the World Cup 2002 theme by ITV, British Airways chose another of the tracks, "Lakme H2O", a "stylish re-imagining of the Flower Duet from Lakmé", for a commercial.
After singing Constance in The Abduction from the Seraglio in Cannes under Reynaldo Hahn, and the three heroines (Olympia, Giulietta, Antonia) in Les contes d'Hoffmann in Strasbourg, opposite the great French bass-baritone Vanni Marcoux, she made her Paris debut at the Gaîté-Lyrique in 1943, as Lakmé, and the following year, made her debut at the Opéra-Comique, in the same role.
He made his debut at the Opéra de Lyon in 1951, where he sang the lead tenor roles in Lakmé, Manon, Mireille, and Les pêcheurs de perles.
Examples of the French tradition of a light, lyrical voice can be found in roles such as George Brown in La dame blanche, Chapelou in Le postillon de Lonjumeau, Nadir in Les pêcheurs de perles, Vincent in Mireille, and Gérald in Lakmé.
The duet takes place in act 1 of the three-act opera, between characters Lakmé, the daughter of a Brahmin priest, and her servant Mallika, as they go to gather flowers by a river.