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private performances, typically for the French mid-Lent festival of , but Saint-Saëns was adamant that the work would not be published in his lifetime, seeing it as detracting from his "serious" composer image.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
Day of the Animals is shocking for a modern audience raised on his work in comedy. Writer William W. Norton was himself disappointed in the film. Modest praise was issued by "The Hollywood Reporter". Some critics nevertheless recommended the film to fans of natural horror and disaster films of the 1970s. AllMovie compared it to "Kingdom of the Spiders" and "Frogs" Those who saw the film at a young age have formed a cult following of sorts. Day of the Animals Day of the Animals is a 1977 American natural horror film directed by William Girdler and based on a story written by Edward