Antoine Simon was one of the few composers in Russia at the time to create works for wind instruments such as the quartet-like sonata Op.
Simon also composed orchestrations for the ballet Don Quixote by Ludwig Minkus, in particular for the Danse de Mercedes and several variations, such as that of the dryads in the dream tableau.
Antoine Simon collaborated with the talented Alexander Alexeyevich Gorsky from the arrival of the latter in Moscow.
By the end of 1901, they started working on La Fille de Gudule, ballet inspired by Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
However, Simon's ballet differed from the latter because the focus was on mass scenes: real crowds moved in front of the audience, in a show of four acts and nine tableaux.
Gorski has carefully prepared for this work; he also went to Paris in order to assimilate the locations of the plot of this ballet which premiered 24 November 1902 at Bolshoi, on a music by Simon, theatrical scenery by Konstantin Korovin and costumes by Aleksander Golovin.