Title - Rabbit of Seville
Director - Chuck Jones
Released - 1950
Interesting Fact -- Voted #20 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field in 1994
Reason for Placement --
It's Rabbit Season again, and Bugs is on the run from Elmer, hiding out backstage at a large theater. However, as Elmer accidentally runs onstage looking for his prey, the curtain goes up, and Bugs and Elmer find themselves the stars of a new twist on the classic opera, The Barber of Seville.
While it goes without saying that Friz Freleng was the master of timing to music in Looney Tunes, the few music-based shorts that Jones directed truly stand out amongst some of the most memorable cartoons ever created. Carl Starling outdoes himself with this short, combining Rossini's brilliant opera with his own arraignments to help give the short an amazing musical score, punctuated with Elmer and Bugs' singing (interestingly enough, the two only sing through the first half, the rest is done without dialogue). The animation matches perfectly with each note; in fact, during the scene where Bugs "plays piano" on Elmer's head, Jones gives us the only animated sequence where Bugs is featured with five fingers to help match up with the hand of a piano player.
Bravo! Rossini with a quick salute to Mozart. Hey, you need to be up on your opera repitoire to catch all the in jokes in this one. One of my favorites.
ReplyDeleteHands down, my all-time favorite Looney Tune. Magnificent timing and animation. I remember when I say them do The Barber of Seville at the Met, all I could think of during the intro was this short (during "Largo al Factotum", I thought of "Magical Maestro")
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