Bugs Bunny: Classical Musicomedy
by David Krell
david@davidkrell.com
Bugs Bunny’s Overtures to Disaster presents classical music in the context of classic cartoon comedy. Five selections orchestrate a melodic theme for Bugs Bunny’s Under the Stars Concert where anything can happen, especially with Bugs conducting the orchestra. And in true Looney Tunes form, anything does happen.
CBS aired Overtures on April 17, 1991 as part of its Toon Night anthology programming. It combined new Warner Brothers animation with classic sequences. Variety reviewed Overtures for its April 19, 1991 edition.
CBS ‘Toon Night animation anthology kicks off with an uneven Bugs Bunny special that, as usual, dramatizes the vast gulf that exists between the classic Warner Bros. animation and what’ s coming out today. But the gulf is narrowing, as the energy and ambition of WB’s Tiny Toons start to rub off on these primetime compliation efforts.
Two selections probably entrenched in the memory of anyone who grew up watching Bugs Bunny cartoons repeat in Overtures -- The Rabbit of Seville (Looney Tunes, 1950) and What’s Opera, Doc? (Merrie Melodies, 1957). Gioachino Antonio Rossini’s The Barber of Seville and Richard Wagner’s Gotterdammerung a.k.a. Kill the Wabbit! set the tone for both pieces respectively.
Animator Chuck Jones’ appreciation for the depth of classical music and the challenges therein for the animator manifest in What’s Opera, Doc? Jones indicates a true appreciation for the opera. He takes steps to ensure the animation matches the quality of classical music. Steve Schneider explains further in That’s All Folks: The Art of Warner Brothers Animation (1988).
But Jones’ relationship to classical music is not, at bottom, satirical; rather, he often seems awed by its grandeur, and seeks to share in that glow. And nowhere is this more evident than in 1957’s What’s Opera, Doc? In this tour de force, Jones compressed the entirety of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen -- a cycle of four operas that is fourteen hours long -- into six minutes, and threw in heavy doses of Fantasia-bashing besides.
Schneider also details the effort to make What’s Opera, Doc?
By any standards this is an extraordinary cartoon, and for one made as late as 1957 it seems something of a miracle. In fact, Jones knew he was undertaking an unusual work, and so stole two weeks of production time from his other cartoons to lavish more attention on What’s Opera, Doc? -- thereby having all of seven weeks to devote to it. Whereas a typical cartoon might use about sixty different shows, What’s Opera, Doc? required 106.
Jones also used classical music for laughs. The Rabbit of Seville utilizes the barber theme to its utmost humor point. Bugs’ nonchalant look at the audience while using his feet to massage Elmer’s bald head to the music’s beat is nothing less than hysterical. Indeed, Jones mined the genre for satire in Seville and another short not seen in Overtures -- Long-Haired Hare (Looney Tunes, 1949). Long-Haired Hare featured our favorite rabbit annoying a conceited opera singer -- Giovanni Jones.
The Barber of Seville holds distinction as one of the best-known classical pieces. Kenneth Chalmers provides background in the liner notes accompanying London Records’ Rossini Overtures.
By the time he came to write his most famous comic opera, Il babeire di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) in 1816, Rossini had been based for a year in Naples, as the resident composer for the San Carlo theatre, where he was required to provide serious operas. He was allowed to accept commissions from elsewhere, however, and both Torvaldo e Dorliska (December 1815) and Il barbiere (February 1816) were written for theatres in Rome.
Chalmers also lends insight into Rossini’s music. Much has been made of Rossini’s readiness to re-use material, and contemporary audiences were quick to spot any ‘reminiscences’ from operas they had already heard. The brilliant overture to the Barber is one of the most notorious examples of this, the piece having previously served for both Aureliano in Palmira and Rossini’s first Neapolitan opera, Elisabetta regina d’Inghilterra (Elizabeth, queen of England).
Seinfeld buffs will recognize a portion of Barber from the episode The Barber (NBC, First Aired: November 11, 1993). In this episode, Jerry wants to switch from his regular barber to the barber’s nephew and a comic opera ensues. Rossini’s piece maintains the story’s tongue-in-cheek quality.
Rossini’s other famous piece, The William Tell Overture, appears in a story of the same name in Overtures with Daffy Duck and Porky Pig. We see the usually exasperated Daffy finding a new source of frustration in the audience’s rather large reception for Porky. Consequently, Daffy puts Porky in several ways of harm.
Knowledgeably, the animators use an archery motif for one of Daffy’s schemes. They stay true to the legend of William Tell, a folk hero of Switzerland and an opponent of oppression. Lore holds that Tell refused to carry out a command of Bailiff Gessler in the early 1300’s and, in turn, received a mandate to shoot an apple placed on his son’s head.
This selection ends with the Lone Ranger making a cameo and Porky Pig predictably asking, Who was that masked man? Indeed, since the Lone Ranger’s debut on radio in 1933, The William Tell Overture has been the character’s hallmark theme, whether the theme be radio, television, or film.
Rossini’s William Tell opera, written in 1829, derives from an 1804 play by J. C. Friedrich von Schiller. Rossine wrote the piece during his third significant career period in Paris, the first two taking place in Venice and Naples. In the aforementioned liner notes, Kenneth Chalmers explains Rossini’s growth as a composer with this orchestration. He also outlines the four parts denoting the day’s beginning, a storm, the countryside, and a military victory.
The last of Rossini’s operas in French was Guillaume Tell (1829), and the famous overture to this shows how far Rossini had travelled since his first, Venetian operas. Atmosphere is now an important element, and the piece evokes the natural world of the opera’s Swiss setting, from the serene opening, through the representation of a storm and the pastoral ranz des vaches [translation: countryside], to the energetic galop which brings the overture to its exciting close. We recognize the fourth part as the Lone Ranger theme.
Franz von Suppe’s Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna and Franz Liszt’s The Hungarian Rhapsody also avail themselves in Overtures. Liszt’s composition appears in Rhapsody Rabbit (Merrie Melodies, 1946). This story features Bugs trying to play Hungarian Rhapsody on a piano solo while a mouse interferes with his plan.
Some added bonuses appear in Overtures, one being Sylvester singing The Charleston and performing the appropriate dance steps. In addition, Overtures begins with an underrated, underutilized, underappreciated trio in the Warner Brothers cartoon stable. The Three Bears only appeared in five shorts, but they kick off Overtures with Mama Bear encouraging the family about the concert’s entertainment value.
Throughout the show, an indestructible, experimental fly wreaks havoc on the players’ performance. The fly escaped from a laboratory.
At twenty-four minutes in length, Bugs Bunny’s Overtures to Disaster can give children a brief, beginning exposure to classical music.