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private performances, typically for the French mid-Lent festival of , but Saint-Saëns was adamant that the work would not be published in his lifetime, seeing it as detracting from his "serious" composer image.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
The Carnival of the Animals from the first movement, ", through portraits of elephants and donkeys ("Those with Long Ears") to a finale reprising many of the earlier motifs. Several of the movements are of humorous intent: In 1949, Ogden Nash wrote a set of humorous verses to accompany each movement for a Columbia Masterworks recording of "Carnival of the Animals" conducted by Andre Kostelanetz. They were recited on the original album by Noël Coward, dubbed over or spliced in between sections of the previously recorded music. The poems are now often included when the work is performed, though usually recited before each piece. The