Bugs Bunny's Overtures to Disaster

Recordings of all the Beethoven symphonies with their chief conductor are always a milestone in the artistic work of the Berliner Philharmoniker. So it was with Herbert von Karajan and Claudio Abbado, and expectations are correspondingly high for this cycle conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. Where does the special status of these symphonies come from? Simon Rattle has an explanation: “One of the things Beethoven does is to give you a mirror into yourself – where you are now as a musician.” In fact, this music contains such a wealth of extreme emotions and brilliant compositional ideas that reveal the qualities of the orchestra and its conductor as if under a magnifying glass.

Babbit hypnotizies Catsello, despite his efforts to resist, into believing he's Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Jimmy Durante, then a chicken, and finally a dog, who he sics on the cat. The cat hypnotizes him back. Finally, Catstello hypnotizes both of them into cowboy and horse, leaving him alone to enjoy the deli they live in.

A "Rosie the Riveter" type is in need of a baby-sitter for her awful child. The only person available is a clueless Porky Pig. His only instructions are to use a book of child psychology. After fruitless attempts to control the brat, his mother returns to show Porky how to use the book - as a paddle on his little behind.

While attempting to evade a group of hunters, Bugs Bunny jumps into a rabbit hole and inadvertently tunnels into Sing Song prison, where the malevolent prison guard, Sam Schultz, assumes he's an inmate.

Bugs Bunny, once again making that "wrong turn at Albuquerque", burrows into a bullring where a magnificent bull is making short work of a toreador. The bull bucks Bugs out of the arena, prompting the bunny to declare "Of course you realize, this means war!" The deft Bugs' arsenal comes plenty packed, as he uses anvils, well-placed face slaps and the bull's horns as a slingshot. The bull fights back, using his horns as a shotgun barrel. The bull's comeback is short-lived; just after Bugs makes out his will, he lures the bull out of the arena, just in time to set up a rube-like device that leads to the bull's defeat.

A lion wants to prove he's still "King of the Jungle" and, to prove it, he hunts rabbit.

Beethoven spent three years composing the Eroica, an intimate journal of his emotional crises and his dramatic emergence as an original master. Michael Tilson Thomas and the musicians of the San Francisco Symphony help you make sense of this voyage into life as it really is.

Beethoven · Violin Concerto & Symphony No. 6 'Pastoral' (Bernard Haitink, Isabelle Faust)

L. van Beethoven Symfonie d moll

Elmer Fudd is hunting both Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny again.

Behind the Hollywood Bowl stage which is playing the opera The Barber of Seville, Bugs Bunny flees into the backstage area with Elmer Fudd in close pursuit. Seeing his opportunity to fight on his terms, Bugs raises the curtain on Elmer, trapping him on stage. As the orchestra begins playing, Bugs comes into play as the barber who is going to make sure that Elmer is going to get a grooming he will never forget.

Home video featuring The London Philharmonic performing music from Dragon Quest IV: Michibikareshi Monotachi, conducted by composer Koichi Sugiyama.

Leonard Maltin introduces us to and takes us back to a theatre showing Wartime cartoon shorts and explains how Bugs and Daffy and the gang, through a collection/sampling of 11 cartoon shorts which served the war effort.

Bugs Bunny vs. a famous opera singer at the Hollywood Bowl.

The short-tempered Daffy Duck must improvise madly as the backgrounds, his costumes, the soundtrack, even his physical form, shifts and changes at the whim of the animator.

Elmer Fudd is again hunting rabbits - only this time it's an opera. Wagner's Siegfried with Elmer as the titular hero and Bugs as Brunnhilde. They sing, they dance, they eat the scenery.

Daffy Duck and Bugs argue back and forth whether it is duck season or rabbit season. The object of their arguments is hunter Elmer Fudd.

To play Beethoven's music is to give oneself over completely to the child-spirit which lived in that grim, awkward, violent man. Without that utter submission it is impossible to play the Adagio of the Ninth. Or, Heaven knows, the first movement. And the Finale? Most of all! It is simply unplayable unless we go all the way with him, as he cries out "Brüder!" - Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein performs three of his own compositions with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra at the Philharmonic in Berlin.

Space hero Daffy battles Marvin the Martian for control of Planet X.