ABSTRACT
The salons of the fashionable and artistic world were in four areas of Paris inhabited by members of the French aristocracy of ancient lineage as well as those more recently elevated to titles, financiers, politicians, wealthy industrialists and other members of the wealthy middle class, as well as successful musicians and other artists. Many fashionable salons offered music as part of the afternoon or evening entertainment. One of the most celebrated literary salons of the day and which sometimes offered music to its guests was that of Emile and Delphine Girardin. One of the centres of private musical soirees in Paris was the Austrian Embassy, Rodolphe Apponyi's uncle the Ambassador being a devoted and knowledgeable music lover. The salon of the Lionnet brothers was another scene of purely musical events. This, the decade of the 1860s, was the most brilliant period of Princess Mathilde's salon, but as the decade came to a close her life was deeply troubled.
