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Cleveland Orchestra to perform 'Bugs Bunny on Broadway'
By Elaine Guregian
Beacon Journal arts and culture writer
Published on Sunday, Dec 02, 2007
When the Cleveland Orchestra is serious, it plays Wagner.
When it's having fun, it plays Wagner, too.
Friday and Saturday, the orchestra will skewer Wagner, Rossini and countless other classical composers when it plays Bugs Bunny on Broadway, conducted by George Daugherty.
Anyone who went to a performance of the show at Blossom Music Center in August 2006 knows that these players are adroit at hunting wabbits, or at least playing live while cartoons of Elmer Fudd are projected on screens above them.
Cartoon music expert Daniel Goldmark understands just what cartoon animators/directors like Chuck Jones had in mind. At Goldmark's preconcert lectures for this week's performances, the author of Tunes for 'Toons may let audiences in on some of the countless inside jokes that happen in the classical music cartoons.
It's the mismatch of high and low art that make the Warner Brothers cartoons so funny, said Goldmark, a musicologist who teaches at Case Western Reserve University.
''Warner Brothers loved to take a stab, or multiple stabs, at the pompousness, or the image that the classical world had of itself,'' Goldmark said.
''Disney had done a really good job of putting itself on the classical music side with Fantasia. Even though there's some humor in it, they still were taking a very serious look at the classics.
''Warner Brothers were doing just the opposite. They wanted to play not just with the music but everything that went into the making of that music. So you have cartoons that really focus on the conductor, and the crazy gestures that conductors make. A lot of the cartoons focus on the performers and the funny things that they do and the idiosyncratic motions that performers (make). They're just a gateway to countless gags.''
For a lot of people, Wagner is opera, and opera is Wagner, Goldmark said. What's Opera, Doc? uses every opera stereotype, from impassioned love aria to magic to drama — the whole shebang, as Goldmark puts it. Animals wearing Viking helmets and blond braids, singing at the top of their lungs, get a laugh every time.
And it doesn't matter that kids today don't hear opera in the background as much as they did in the 1940s and '50s, when the cartoons on this program were created. It's true that because the cartoons refer to the culture of the time, people today may miss out on some of the jokes, Goldmark said, adding, ''At the same time, it's amazing how much kids love these cartoons in particular, and I think part of it has to do with the fact that they are so deftly set to music.
''I'm not willing to say it's the greatness of Wagner or Rossini or some of these other composers, because that's a bigger leap than I'm willing to make. But I do know that What's Opera, Doc? always kills, as it were, no matter how old the kids are, no matter what generation they are, because everything is so perfectly synced up. The characters are so earnest, the music is really powerful, and there you go.''
Kids today who watch TV on iPod-size screens may be surprised by the effect of seeing the cartoons on a huge screen at Severance Hall. The large scale is what the original directors intended. In the 1970s, some of the cartoon directors were horrified to see their creations shrunk to television size. ''If only they knew where things were going,'' Goldmark said.
Most of the cartoons on the program — What's Opera, Doc? Baton Bunny, Jumpin' Jupiter, Rabbit of Seville, Long-Haired Hare — were directed by Chuck Jones. That's why the program includes a video salute to Jones. (Unlike the Blossom show in 2006, there is no Act I of orchestra playing alone.)
It's all cartoons, all program long. That's all, folks, and it should be enough for a good laugh.
Elaine Guregian can be reached at 330-996-3574 or eguregian@thebeaconjournal.com.
When the Cleveland Orchestra is serious, it plays Wagner.
Get the full article here.
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