[3] Poulenc began work on his ballet in 1940, completing a piano score in September 1941 and orchestrating it between October 1941 and June 1942.

[2] In his words, "The grasshopper has become an ageing ballerina, the ant an old provincial housemaid, the amorous lion a pimp, Death an elegant woman – a kind of duchess with a mask".

[4] The commentator Gérald Hugon observes: [D]ifferent musical styles are brought together in delightful fashion – passionate "grand piano" writing set against the "bad boy's" waltz-java in Le Lion amoureux, the verve of the Offenbachian can-can in L'Homme entre deux âges et ses deux maîtresses, Mussorgskyan turns of phrase in La Mort et le Bûcheron and a deliberate borrowing from Paganini's Caprice No.

[5] At the time of the premiere, Poulenc's friend and colleague Arthur Honegger wrote that "the influences that have worked upon him – Chabrier, Satie, Stravinsky – are now completely assimilated.

Paris was under Nazi occupation, and the many German officers in the audience failed to spot the composer's defiant incorporation of the anti-German song "Vous n'aurez pas l'Alsace et la Lorraine" in his score.