As well as drama, the story of Messalina was adapted to ballet and opera. Luigi Danesi's 1884 ballet was made a fantastical spectacle at the Éden-Théâtre in Paris, with its elephants, horses, massive crowd scenes and circus games in which rows of bare-legged female gladiators preceded the fighters. Isidore de Lara's opera "Messaline", based on a 4-act verse tragedy by Armand Silvestre and Eugène Morand, centred upon the love of the empress for a poet and then his gladiator brother. It opened in Monte Carlo in 1899 and went on to Covent Garden. The ailing Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec saw the Bordeaux production and was inspired to paint six scenes from it, including "Messalina Seated" and "Messalina descending the staircase".