It was created in English in the summer of 1983 and published in the collective's journal, Art-Language, volume 5, n°2 of March 1984.

[1] The French translation of the opera was first published in 1993 by the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume on the occasion of the Art & Language exhibition.

In Paris 1865, in a police station, a vast rectangular room, Inspector Denis is leaning against a long counter.

Inspector Denis decided to investigate in a place where the young girl was dating: the Café Vingt-et-Un.

Inspector Denis shows Victorine Meurend a picture of the body, which, horrified, identifies her friend Virginie.

Victorine denounces the Inspector's contempt for the demi-mondaines women of which she is a member: Among those you despise, I am well knownAnd I can't stand your importuning tone.At the police station, Sergeant Nozière and Inspector Denis linked this murder to a series of murders of young women.

They allude to several works of art: Gustave Courbet's Les Demoiselles des Bords de la Seine and Manet's Olympia.

Picas Osebracs reveals to Inspector Denis that the murdered girl was not a prostitute but a model who posed for painters.

"It is a history of my studio, everythingThat goes on there morally and physically,All pretty mysterious...Devinera qui pourra!"

In a dark street in Paris, Inspector Denis and Sergeant Nozière are hidden in order to watch the entrance to Gustave Courbet's workshop.

Courbet declares: My life is forfeit to the masses' strife,To resurgence - and to art.Inspector Denis shows him a search warrant.

Confused, the Inspector sees in Olympia's painting a projection of the murder that Manet intends to commit.

He describes Victorine as an embodiment of modernity: The core and skin of our civility.Finally, Inspector Denis excludes Manet as a suspect.

What shall I sayTo these crazy police?I could turn my headWith a look that defies,And in killing his pleasureBe dead in his eyes.Victorine's musical score is written by Mayo Thompson, leader of the American experimental rock group Red Krayola[12] who has been collaborating regularly with Art & Language since the 1970s.

Initially, Victorine was to be performed in the city of Cassel, Germany for documenta 7 in 1982 and shown alongside Art & Language Studio at 3 Wesley Place; Painted by Actors.