BUGS BUNNY ON BROADWAY
It’s every musician’s fate: You never know where your music will end up, or how it will be used, loved, loathed, or ignored. Just as Vivaldi probably had no idea that his music would accentuate the comforting clasp of countless massage therapists, I’m sure Wagner never imagined that most Americans would know “Ride of the Valkyries” from Elmer Fudd singing “Kill da wabbit, kill da wabbit….”
So how did classical music end up in cartoons? Classical composers wrote good tunes by the bushel, and the folks who produced Warner Bros. cartoons in the heyday of the ’30s and ’40s figured they could save money by using works in the public domain. Rather than pay for reams of new music, it was cheaper to hire arrangers such as Carl Stalling or Milt Franklyn, who then rearranged the music, adding their own work as needed. Tin Pan Alley songs owned by Warner Bros.’ publishing arm crept in too, but a fair chunk of the classic cartoons relied on Wagner, Smetana, Strauss, Rossini, and other Dead White Guys.
History aside, this concert looks like fun. Conductor George Daugherty and the Seattle Symphony perform the original arrangements synchronized to Warner Bros. cartoons projected onto a giant screen. If you grew up watching battered, decades-old prints on TV, the new big-screen prints and digitally re-recorded voices of “What’s Opera, Doc?”, “The Rabbit of Seville,” “A Corny Concerto,” “Rhapsody Rabbit,” and “Baton Bunny” should be a revelation.
The Seattle Symphony performs Bugs Bunny on Broadway Thurs July 11 at 7:30 pm, Fri July 12 at 8 pm, and Sat July 13 at 2 & 8 pm, at Benaroya Hall, 200 University St, 215-4747, $20-$56.
