Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune
The symbolist aesthetic affected the works of Claude Debussy. His choices of "libretti", texts, and themes come almost exclusively from the symbolist canon. Compositions such as his settings of "Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire", various art songs on poems by Verlaine, the opera "Pelléas et Mélisande" with a libretto by Maurice Maeterlinck, and his unfinished sketches that illustrate two Poe stories, "The Devil in the Belfry" and "The Fall of the House of Usher", all indicate that Debussy was profoundly influenced by symbolist themes and tastes. His best known work, the "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune", was inspired by Mallarmé's poem, "L'après-midi d'un faune".