His birth was registered under the name of his mother Lina Eraïm Miriam, aged 38, of Nantes, and an unnamed father.

[1] Delaborde was generally believed to be the illegitimate son of the composer and pianist Charles-Valentin Alkan and one of his high-class married pupils.

[2] Delaborde was the maiden name of Antoinette, mother of George Sand, the author and sometime lover of Alkan's friend Frédéric Chopin.

[5] He made successful tours of England, Germany and Russia, and travelled with Henri Vieuxtemps and Henryk Wieniawski.

[1] In Spring of 1871, during the Franco-Prussian War, he escaped from France to London with his 121 parrots and cockatoos, as well as two pet monkeys.

[1] In 1873 he was appointed professor at the Conservatoire de Paris, where his pupils included Olga Samaroff (one-time wife of Leopold Stokowski),[3] Aline van Barentzen, and Marie Poitevin, the dedicatee of César Franck's Prelude, Chorale and Fugue.