While working on the transcription, Ravel was informed that Spanish conductor Enrique Fernández Arbós had already orchestrated the movements, and that copyright law prevented any other arrangement from being made.

[3] While on vacation at St Jean-de-Luz, Ravel went to the piano and played a melody with one finger to his friend Gustave Samazeuilh, saying, "Don't you think this theme has an insistent quality?

The composition was a sensational success when it premiered at the Paris Opéra on 22 November 1928, with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska and designs and scenario by Alexandre Benois.

Originally, Ernest Ansermet had been engaged to conduct the entire ballet season, but the musicians refused to play under him.

[5] A scenario by Rubinstein and Nijinska was printed in the program for the premiere:[5] Inside a tavern in Spain, people dance beneath the brass lamp hung from the ceiling.

But Ravel had a different conception of the work: his preferred stage design was of an open-air setting with a factory in the background, reflecting the mechanical nature of the music.

[12] On 4 May 1930, Toscanini performed the work with the New York Philharmonic at the Paris Opéra as part of that orchestra's European tour.

[15] Four months later, Ravel attempted to smooth over relations with Toscanini by sending him a note explaining that "I have always felt that if a composer does not take part in the performance of a work, he must avoid the ovations" and, ten days later, inviting Toscanini to conduct the premiere of his Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, an invitation that was declined.

[2] Other factors in the work's renown were the large number of early performances, gramophone records, including Ravel's own, transcriptions and radio broadcasts, together with the 1934 motion picture Bolero starring George Raft and Carole Lombard, in which the music plays an important role.

The first melody is diatonic, and the second introduces more jazz-influenced elements, with syncopation and flattened notes (technically it is mostly in the Phrygian mode).

The bass line and accompaniment are initially played on pizzicato strings, mainly using rudimentary tonic and dominant notes.

[23] In May 1994, with the Munich Philharmonic on tour in Cologne, conductor Sergiu Celibidache at the age of 82 gave a performance that lasted 17 minutes and 53 seconds, perhaps a record in the modern era.

[24] At Coppola's first recording, Ravel indicated strongly that he preferred a steady tempo, criticizing the conductor for getting faster at the end of the work.

Before its first performance, I issued a warning to the effect that what I had written was a piece lasting seventeen minutes and consisting wholly of "orchestral tissue without music"—of one very long, gradual crescendo.

"[27] Literary critic Allan Bloom commented in his 1987 bestseller The Closing of the American Mind, "Young people know that rock has the beat of sexual intercourse.

"[28] In a 2011 article for The Cambridge Quarterly, Michael Lanford wrote, "throughout his life, Maurice Ravel was captivated by the act of creation outlined in Edgar Allan Poe's Philosophy of Composition."

[30] Lanford also proposes that Boléro is imbued with tragedy, observing that the snare drum "dehumanizes one of the most sensuously connotative aspects of the bolero",[31] "instruments with the capacity for melodic expression mimic the machinery,"[32] and the melody consistently ends with a descending tetrachord.

[33] Boléro gained new attention after it featured prominently in the 1979 romantic comedy 10, costarring Dudley Moore and Bo Derek.

This resulted in massive sales, generated an estimated $1 million in royalties, and briefly made Ravel the best-selling classical composer 40 years after his death.

[38] The eight-minute short film Le batteur du Boléro (1992) by Patrice Leconte concentrates on the drummer, played by Jacques Villeret, and the problems of his musical part.

[47] The work is public domain in Canada, China, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa, and many others where the copyright term is "Life + 50 years".

[48][better source needed] The last remaining rights owner, Evelyne Pen de Castel, has entered a number of claims that the work was in fact co-created with the designer Alexandre Benois.