Opera audiences in 19th-century Paris may never have visited India, but they loved to dream about it. After the successes enjoyed by Lespecheurs de perles and Le roi de Lahore Delibes knew what he was doing when he chose to set an adaptation of Pierre Loti's exotic Indian novel Rarahu and duly scored a hit with his opera Lakme at the Opera-Comique in 1883. The opera is nothing without a star in the title-role.