Rabbit of Seville

One of the best of the Warner Brothers cartoons. The scenes of Elmer Fudd chasing Bugs Bunny during the opera are so brilliantly done with the music. The chase scene with the bigger and bigger weapons is one of the all-time classics.

This is one of Chuck Jones's masterpieces, an incredible blend of music (mainly opera) and animation. The new lyrics written to the very old and familiar music are priceless, as is the scene where Elmer at first thinks he's starting to grow hair. One of the best cartoons Warner Brothers ever produced. Well worth watching. Most highly and happily recommended!

While chasing Bugs Bunny thru the mountains, Elmer and Bugs happen upon a concert performance of Rossini's opera 'Il barbiere di Siviglia'. Seizing the opportunity to cause major mayhem and trickery, Bugs hijacks the opera for his own wicked plans.

Now Bugs and Elmer are the stars of the show and pain, torture and humiliation come in that order. The animation, timing, music and editing are all absolutely perfect in this cartoon. Surely one of the finest Looney Tune efforts containing all the anarchy, madness and insanity they are famous for plus enough intelligence and cleverness to put a roomful of NASA experts to shame.

Okay, I am not a big fan of Charles Jones later work. I preferred him when he was "Charles M" instead of "Chuck." But this cartoon has persisted to be one of my two favourite episodes of the Looney Tunes characters. There really is nothing poorly done about the entire episode. The script is wonderful and witty, the music subject matter is perfect, and the singing is spot-on (especially for voiced characters). While I feel that "What's Opera, Doc?" is a bit heavy handed, and was never one of my favourites, I will stop what I am doing just to watch the Rabbit of Seville whenever I see that it is on the TV.

If you value culture, or classic cartoons, this one has both. Many people in the West feel that cartoons cannot contain a cultural valuability that allows them to be either serious or even good. Well, I can honestly say that this one, while not serious, is actually a good piece of art, and stands alone well, proving to itself and other cartoons that even without seriousness, a cartoon can be more than kiddy jokes.

"Rabbit of Seville" has Elmer Fudd trying to shoot Bugs Bunny, and so the latter leads the former into an opera house where "The Barber of Seville" is about to be performed. Within a minute, Bugs and Elmer are the barber and customer, respectively. Needless to say, Bugs tries a few unsavory experiments on Elmer.

In an interview, Chuck Jones explained how, listening to Bugs sing his own lyrics for the opera (Welcome to my shop/Let me cut your mop/Let me shave your crop), you almost get the impression that the lyrics were written specifically for him. The first time when I ever saw this cartoon when I was really young, I probably thought that, as I didn't know about the original opera. Rossini would be really proud of the whole Chuck Jones/Michael Maltese/Mel Blanc creative team. Excellent.