Caillebotte bequeathed it to the state upon his death in 1894, which added it to the collection of the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris, and then later exhibited it at the Louvre.

It was recovered in 2018 when customs inspectors found it in the luggage compartment of a bus they searched in the department of Seine-et-Marne outside Paris; the thieves have not been identified.

[1] Don Giovanni had not been performed much in Paris until 1866, when Jean-Baptiste Faure, who had commissioned works from Degas, was able to apply his baritone to the title role, after which there were many productions.

At the time of Les Choristes, Degas had also illustrated Halévy's father Ludovic's Monsieur Cardinal, which takes place backstage during a performance of the opera.

La Petite Republique Française went further, comparing Les Choristes and other paintings depicting performers offstage and on—Café-Concert and Dancers at the Barre among them—favorably with the work of Paul Gavarni and Alfred Grévin.

[6] In 2009 the Orsay loaned Les Choristes to the Musée Cantini in Marseille for "De la scène au tableau" ("The Scene in Painting"), a multi-artist exhibit.

On the last morning of the year, shortly before the exhibit ended, the security guard who opened the museum for the day found the painting missing.

On February 16, 2018, French customs officers pulled over and searched an intercity bus off an exit from the A4 autoroute in Ferrières-en-Brie, 30 kilometres (19 mi) east of Paris in the department of Seine-et-Marne.

[3] Several days later, in a joint news release, the customs agency and the Ministry of Culture announced the recovery of Les Choristes.

Culture Minister Françoise Nyssen praised the customs service for "the fortunate recovery of a precious work whose disappearance had been a great loss to our national Impressionist heritage."

Gérald Darmanin, Minister of Public Action and Accounts, said "the constant vigilance of customs", which had seized 10,000 possibly stolen works of art during 2017, had again proved its value in protecting French heritage.

[8] The previous year, the Orsay had marked the centenary of Degas's death with an exhibit of his work focusing on his relationship with Paul Valéry.

The museum announced that it would include Les Choristes in an exhibit of the artist's work depicting opera, set to open in September 2019.