Saint-Saëns’ “The Carnival of the Animals”: The Kanneh-Masons and Friends
In February of 1886, Camille Saint-Saëns set aside work on his Third Symphony to write The Carnival of the Animals. Saint-Saëns considered it an act of compositional frivolity for a purely private audience. He prohibited public performances of the work during his lifetime out of fear that it would damage his reputation as a serious composer. The Carnival of the Animals is full of parodies and inside jokes. A quote of Offenbach’s famous …