In the neighboring box were their Royal Highnesses the Count and Countess of Flanders, accompanied by the Baron Van den Bossch d'Hylissem and Count Oultremont de Duras, grand master of the princely household.
In the Court Boxes were Jules Devaux, chief of the King's cabinet; Generals Goethals and Goffinet, aides-de-camp; Baron Lunden, Colonel Baron Anethan, Major Donny, Captain Wyckerslooth, the King's orderlies.
In the principal boxes: M. Antonin Proust, Minister of Fine Arts in France, with Baron Beyens, Belgian Minister to Paris, the heads of the cabinet, and Mme. Frère Orban, etc.
In the lower stage box: M. Buls, recently elected Burgomaster, and the aldermen.
In the stalls and balcony were numerous people from Paris: the composers, Reyer, Saint-Saëns, Benjamin Godard, Joncières, Guiraud, Serpette, Duvernois, Julien Porchet, Wormser, Le Borne, Lecocq, etc., etc.
This brilliant emotional audience, said the chronicles of the time, made the work a delirious success.
Between the second and the third acts Queen Marie Henriette summoned the composer to her box and congratulated him warmly, as well as Reyer whose Statue had just been given at the Monnaie.
The enthusiasm swelled crescendo to the end of the evening. The last act ended amid cheers. There were loud calls for the composer and the curtain was raised several times, but the "author" did not appear. As the audience was unwilling to leave the house, the stage manager, Lapissida, who had staged the work, finally had to announce that the author had left as soon as the performance ended.
Two days after the Première the composer was invited to dine at Court and a royal decree appeared in the Moniteur naming him Chevalier de l'Ordre de Léopold.
The dazzling success of the first performance was trumpeted through the European press, which, almost without exception, praised it in enthusiastic terms. As to the enthusiasm of the first days, it continued persistently through fifty-five consecutive performances, which, according to the papers, realized four thousand francs every evening above the subscriptions.