page_title: Bal Mabille
section_title: In literature and popular culture
hierarchical_section_title: Bal Mabille / In literature and popular culture
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Partition
context_page_description: The Bal Mabille, also known as Jardin Mabille and Mabille Gardens in English, was a fashionable open-air dance establishment on what is now Avenue Montaigne in Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Paris, extending from 49 to 53 in the modern street numbering. It was opened in 1831, when the area was still largely rural, was struck by shells during the siege of Paris in 1870–71, and closed in 1875. Both the polka and the can-can were reportedly introduced there.
context_section_description: Balzac mentions the Bal Mabille several times in La Comédie humaine as a place frequented by the kind of prostitute known at the time as a lorette, and a poem by Louis Aragon contains the line "Le secret de Paris n'est pas au bal Mabille" - "The secret of Paris is not in the Bal Mabille".
  Gustave Nadaud wrote the lyrics for a song called "Les reines de Mabille" (The Queens of Mabille"), with music by A. Pilati. In a 1942 rewrite of Charles Lecocq's 1872 operetta Les cent vierges (The Hundred Virgins), it is the setting of the first act, which features a song about the can-canning there. 
  In Hans Christian Andersen's "The Wood Nymph: A Tale of the 1867 Paris Exposition," the main character is amazed by the "Mabile" garden and joins the wild dancing.
  In Act I of Puccini’s famous opera La Bohème, set in Paris during the 1840s, the character Marcello tells his landlord, Benoît, that he’s seen him at the “Mabil” engaged in a “sin of love.”
  Mark Twain describes a brief visit in his book The Innocents Abroad.
caption: Cover of sheet music for "Les reines de Mabille", a song about the Bal Mabille composed by A. Pilati, with lyrics by Gustave Nadaud
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