This concert programme invites the audience into fin-de-siècle musical Paris through two works by the same composer, brought together here, despite being of two quite distant genres and associated to different contexts. Begun in 1855, the composition of the Quartet op. 45 was completed in 1884. A violinist, Lalo was one of the founders of one of the first French string quartets, the Quatuor Armingaud, to which he dedicated his production for this formation. The ballet Namouna was rather the object of numerous transcriptions for different chamber groupings, including that of the ‘Sérénade’, though not obtaining any particular success at its first performance, at the Paris Opéra in 1882.