Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Kill the Wabbit!!!

This has to be one of my many favorites growing up as a child. I remember when my Dad got me a Merrie Melodies VHS that had 3 cartoons on it. Haha that was around 1985, and "What's Opera, Doc?" was on it! I play that over and over and OVER, you can imagine my Dad soon realized that was a bad idea to get me that tape HAHA!
1957 animated cartoon short in the Merrie Melodies series, directed by Chuck Jones for Warner Bros. Cartoons. The film features Bugs Bunny being chased by Elmer Fudd through a seven-minute operatic parody of 19th century classical composer Richard Wagner's operas, particularly Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) and Tannhäuser. It is sometimes characterized as a condensed version of Wagner's Ring, and its music borrows heavily from the second opera Die Walküre, woven around the standard Bugs-Elmer conflict.

Originally released to theaters by Warner Bros. on July 6, 1957, What's Opera, Doc? features the speaking and singing voices of Mel Blanc as Bugs and Arthur Q. Bryan as Elmer. The short is also sometimes informally referred to as Kill the Wabbit after the line sung by Fudd to the tune of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, the second opera of The Ring.

In 1994, What's Opera, Doc? was voted #1 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by 1000 members of the animation field.

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