Assiduous readers of the Paris journal L’Art musical might have noticed this unusually passionate news item in the edition of August 17, 1876. In it, the Wagnerian composer and critic Victorin Joncières came under attack for an implied lack of patriotism. His sin was to have waxed lyrical over Wagner's Das Rheingold in his column for La Liberté, while, in the same article, decrying Rameau's music as “outdated [and] deadly boring.”

Joncières was in a tiny minority among Parisian journalists, who otherwise reported enthusiastically on the Dijon festival of August 11–15—irrespective of whether they wrote for the specialist or daily press. For the former, both Johann Reuchsel (Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris) and Arthur Pougin (Le Ménestrel) wrote open letters the day after the “fêtes Rameau” officially ended. Four days of concerts, theatrical events, processions, circus acts, shooting competitions, military tattoos, fireworks, and choral competitions—and the inauguration of a statue of Rameau in the old Place du Théâtre (now the Place Sainte-Chapelle)—had drawn an extraordinary 30,000 visitors to the town. Written as though amid the crowds, Reuchsel's letter to readers of the Revue et Gazette musicale buzzed with excitement: “The town is filled with joyous fanfares, the singing of orphéon choruses, and the cries of light-heartedness … the town bustles with laughing and singing. Dijon is like a fairyland.”