Les Choristes ("The Chorus" or "The Chorus Singers") is an 1877 pastel on monotype by French artist Edgar Degas. Part of a series of similar works depicting daily public entertainment at the time, it shows a group of singers performing a scene from the opera Don Giovanni, the only work by Degas depicting an operatic performance without dancers. Les Choristes, and other contemporary works of the artist such as Café-Concert at Les Ambassadeurs, show the influence of French caricaturists of the era. Honoré Daumier is often invoked, but critics and art historians have identified others. Critics at the time praised it, with one suggesting that the singers' "hideous" faces made them seem more real. After its initial exhibition, Les Choristes was purchased by Gustave Caillebotte, a fellow painter and friend of Degas's who used his own large inheritance to support fellow Impressionists. Caillebotte bequeathed it to the state upon his death in 1894, which added it to the collection of the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris, and then later exhibited it at the Louvre. In 1986 it was moved to the Musée d'Orsay with other works of modern art. At the end of 2009, while on loan to the Musée Cantini in Marseille, the work was stolen. Investigators were unable to find any leads. It was recovered in 2018 when customs inspectors found it in the luggage compartment of a bus they searched in the department of Seine-et-Marne outside Paris; the thieves have not been identified. After being found to be relatively undamaged, it was displayed again at the Musée d'Orsay. Description The work is a pastel drawn over an earlier monotype, a technique Degas used for some other works around this time, also depicting performers. While some of them led to multiple works, Les Choristes is the only one known to have been derived from this particular monotype. It is rectangular, almost square, high by wide. It depicts a line of singers along a stage, seen from just to their left and slightly in front. They are illuminated by footlights from in front. All have open mouths; most also have a hand extended towards the audience. The exceptions are the third singer, who seems to be reaching back towards his chest, and the fourth singer behind him, who appears to be raising a sword. They are wearing predominantly orange and yellow costumes. The faces of the singers in the