The British Airways Flower Duet in Pathum Thani: how Bow learns how an aria from the opera Lakmé became an airline's sound, and lights the keyboard before AI piano lessons

Bow is twelve and lives with her grandparents in Pathum Thani, not far from a canal where her grandfather fishes on Sunday mornings. Her uncle works abroad as cabin crew and comes home twice a year with sweets, small soaps from hotels and stories. On his last visit he hummed a melody while unpacking, and Bow asked what it was.

He laughed and said it was the tune that played in the old British Airways adverts when he was a boy, and that he used to hear it and dream of flying. Bow searched for it that evening. The melody was not written for an airline at all. It came from an opera called Lakmé, composed in 1883.

The composer was Léo Delibes, a Frenchman best known for ballets such as Coppélia. Lakmé was first performed at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. It tells a romantic story set in British-ruled India. In the first act the heroine, Lakmé, and her servant, Mallika, sing a gentle, flowing duet as they go down to a river to pick flowers.

The duet is built from two soprano voices weaving around each other, rising and falling over a rocking accompaniment. It is calm, warm and floating, which is perhaps exactly why it later appealed to people selling air travel. Bow listened to an opera recording and then to an advert from the 1980s, and she could hear how closely they matched.

In the late 1980s British Airways began using an arrangement of the Flower Duet in its television and cinema adverts. One famous film showed huge crowds of people forming the shape of a face seen from above. Over the following years, the airline kept returning to the melody in new campaigns with new orchestrations.

An opera duet from 1883 Paris

This is what marketers call sonic branding. Instead of creating a short jingle, the airline chose a melody that already carried a feeling of elegance and peace, and repeated it until audiences connected it with the company. Bow's uncle is proof that it worked. Decades later, he still hums it while packing a suitcase.

There are lessons in that for musicians, too. A melody with a strong, simple shape can be recognised after only a few notes. The Flower Duet is long in the opera, but the advert used only its most memorable phrase. Bow realised that the parts of music people remember are usually short and singable.

She also noticed a risk. When a piece of classical music becomes famous through an advert, many listeners never learn where it really came from. Several of her school friends thought the tune was written for a plane company. Bow enjoyed telling them about a Paris opera house in 1883.

Bow has been taking piano lessons for ten months on TIGA ALPHA, an online piano learning app she uses on a small keyboard in the spare bedroom. The AI piano teacher guides her through short exercises and suggests a new piece once she can play the old one without stopping. Last week it offered a simplified version of the Flower Duet melody.

The spare bedroom has only one window, facing a wall. Bow never starts in a gloomy room: she presses the switch of the strip light above her keyboard first, waits for it to stop flickering, and only then lifts the lid of the instrument. Before she started doing this, she often confused notes on lines with notes in spaces.

With the page well lit, her reading has become steadier. Her piano course gives her a short score for each lesson, and the app checks her accuracy note by note. Bow can now play piano hands together on the duet's opening, the right hand taking one soprano line and the left hand a simple accompaniment.

For children who want to learn piano, the Flower Duet is a good reminder that music travels in surprising ways. A melody written for an opera stage in Paris ended up inside airport lounges and living rooms around the world. Learning where a tune comes from makes it more interesting to play.

At school her music lessons recently covered advertising, and her teacher asked students to bring examples of famous tunes from adverts. Bow brought the Flower Duet and explained its story. Her classmates were surprised, and one boy said he would now listen for classical music in every advert he sees.

Her uncle flies back next month. Bow plans to switch the light on, sit at the keyboard and play music for him: two short phrases of a duet from 1883 that once made a little boy dream about the sky. She hopes he will hum along.

Frequently asked questions

Q: What is the Flower Duet? A: The Flower Duet is a duet for two sopranos from the opera Lakmé by the French composer Léo Delibes, first performed in Paris in 1883. In the scene, Lakmé and her servant Mallika sing as they go to gather flowers by a river.

Q: How did British Airways use the Flower Duet? A: From the late 1980s British Airways used an arrangement of the Flower Duet in its television and cinema adverts. The melody was repeated in campaigns for many years and became strongly associated with the airline.

Q: What is sonic branding? A: Sonic branding means using a consistent piece of music or sound so that people recognise a company by ear. A memorable melody repeated across many adverts can become as familiar as a logo.

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