The Carnival of the Animals and xylophone. From the beginning, Saint-Saëns regarded the work as a piece of fun. On 9 February 1886 he wrote to his publishers Durand in Paris that he was composing a work for the coming Shrove Tuesday, and confessing that he knew he should be working on his Third Symphony, but that this work was "such fun" (). He had apparently intended to write the work for his students at the École Niedermeyer, but it was first performed at a private concert given by the cellist Charles Lebouc on Shrove Tuesday, 9 March 1886. A second (private) performance was given
Carnival in the Netherlands Italy. The carnival of Venice was for a long time the most famous carnival (although Napoleon abolished it in 1797 and only in 1959 the tradition was restored). From Italy carnival traditions spread to the Catholic nations of Spain, Portugal, and France. From France it spread to New France in North America (the mardi gras). From Spain and Portugal, it spread with Catholic colonization to the Caribbean and Latin America. In the early 19th century the weakened medieval tradition started to revive as well in the German Rhineland and Southern Netherlands. In 1823 the first modern carnaval parade took place