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
Wyclef Jean Presents The Carnival called "The Carnival" "a stunning solo album that's light years beyond "The Score"". He also wrote "In his universalist embrace of music of all forms, Wyclef Jean makes a more powerful call for peace and unity than a thousand East Coast-West Coast "Stop the violence, y'all" intros put together.""The Carnival" was voted the sixteenth best album of the year in "The Village Voice"s annual Pazz & Jop critics poll for 1997. Christgau, the poll's creator, ranked it twentieth on his own list. In 2011, "Rolling Stone" ranked "The Carnival" the 69th best album of the 1990s. "The Carnival" debuted at