{"id":34891,"date":"2016-05-23T03:00:02","date_gmt":"2016-05-23T07:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=34891"},"modified":"2016-05-22T21:37:19","modified_gmt":"2016-05-23T01:37:19","slug":"kiww-the-wabbit-smuggled-opera-into-middle-american-childhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/05\/23\/kiww-the-wabbit-smuggled-opera-into-middle-american-childhood\/","title":{"rendered":"“Kiww the Wabbit” smuggled opera into middle American childhood"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some actual opera stars<\/a> admit that their very first exposure to opera music was through Elmer Fudd’s pursuit of Bugs Bunny in “What’s Opera, Doc?”:<\/p>\n

Like many other singers and crew staging the 17-hour, four-opera Wagner extravaganza at the Kennedy Center, Ms. Bishop got her first taste of opera from a cartoon rabbit and his speech-impaired nemesis.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could sing you the entire cartoon before I knew what opera really was,\u201d says Ms. Bishop, who performs the part of Fricka, wife of Wotan, king of the gods.<\/p>\n

The rabbit in question is Bugs Bunny, who, in the 1957 Warner Bros. cartoon \u201cWhat\u2019s Opera, Doc?\u201d finds himself hunted by Elmer Fudd, in the part of the hero, Siegfried.<\/p>\n

\u201cKiww the wabbit! Kiww the wabbit!\u201d Elmer, in an ill-fitting magic helmet, sings to the urgent strains of Ride of the Valkyries as he jabs his spear into a rabbit hole.<\/p>\n

Bugs flees, dons a breast plate and blond braids, climbs atop an obese white horse, and for two minutes and a ballet interlude, fools the smitten Elmer into thinking he is Br\u00fcnnhilde.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, Bw\u00fcnnhilde, you\u2019re so wovewy,\u201d Elmer croons.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, I know it,\u201d Bugs answers coquettishly. \u201cI can\u2019t help it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThose of us who didn\u2019t freak at the sight of a rabbit in a winged helmet sliding off of the back of a fat horse \u2014 we went into opera,\u201d says Ms. Bishop, 49, who grew up in Greenville, S.C.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s just one of those cases of art imitating art imitating art. Generations of people in the opera world grew up spending Saturday mornings eating breakfast cereal and watching Bugs Bunny on TV sets tuned with rabbit ears. For many, \u201cWhat\u2019s Opera, Doc?\u201d was their first glimpse of opera and Wagner. Even if it didn\u2019t exactly inspire their careers, it planted an ear worm that made the music recognizable once they heard the real thing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some actual opera stars admit that their very first exposure to opera music was through Elmer Fudd’s pursuit of Bugs Bunny in “What’s Opera, Doc?”: Like many other singers and crew staging the 17-hour, four-opera Wagner extravaganza at the Kennedy Center, Ms. Bishop got her first taste of opera from a cartoon rabbit and his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,13],"tags":[1063,311,374,200],"class_list":["post-34891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-usa","tag-1950s","tag-1960s","tag-children","tag-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-94L","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34891"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34892,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34891\/revisions\/34892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}