By 1875 Mozart held a unique position in the French operatic canon: the sole eighteenth-century composer whose works were regularly staged in Parisian opera houses. Even then, his fame rested largely on three operas: Le Nozze di Figaro, Die Zauberflöte, and most important, Don Giovanni, known as Don Juan—a work that attained a near-legendary quality in France over the course of the nineteenth century. After fifty years of uninterrupted success in France, it seemed that nothing could topple Mozart's position as the lone eighteenth-century figure in the upper echelon of the operatic canon. So secure was Mozart's status that in 1875, the critic Adolphe Jullien was bewildered by the lackluster early reception of Mozart's operas in France:

Around 1900, however, as critics and audiences gradually became more chauvinistic in their efforts to demonstrate France's great music history, Mozart's continued prominence at the Opéra and Opéra-Comique came into question.