The Carnival of the Animals on 2 April at the home of Pauline Viardot with an audience including Franz Liszt, a friend of the composer, who had expressed a wish to hear the work. There were other private performances, typically for the French mid-Lent festival of , but Saint-Saëns was adamant that the work would not be published in his lifetime, seeing it as detracting from his "serious" composer image. He relented only for the famous cello solo "The Swan", which forms the penultimate movement of the work, and which was published in 1887 in an arrangement by the composer for cello and solo piano
Carnival in Bern opportunity to present an anti-Catholic message during the carnival (or shrovetide) Lenten celebrations. Some Reformation era carnival plays depicted contrasts between Catholics and Protestants, while others contrasted Jews and gentiles, such as in "Goliath" by Hans von Rüte. Niklaus Manuel was the first writer to present ideas for reform and to belittle the Papacy in his plays. In 1522 he wrote two farces about the Pope, in which he showed the difference between the Pope and his priests, and Jesus. Real life events, in particular the Battle of Novara (1513), created the backdrop for Manuel's writings. He wrote about Cardinal