Have You Seen This? Quirky choral piece is a-meow-zing

Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes

THE STAGE — When you hear the phrase “choral concert,” you don’t expect a lot of big laughs.

If you see that the next song in your program is “Duetto buffo di due gatti,” you may expect a classical number sung in a language you don’t readily understand. “Maybe it’s sung a capella, or perhaps it has harpsichord accompaniment,” you may think.

But you would be wrong.

If you speak Italian, you already know that the song name translates to “Funny duet for two cats. While this could be the composer’s musical interpretation of the behavior of a cat (think “Flight of the Bumblebee”), it’s not. The phrase is meant quite literally.

This classic video stars two young boys from the French boy’s choir, Les Petits Chanteurs a la Croix de Bois, also known as The Little Singers of Paris. The music begins, and one may expect a long clear note in Italian to emerge from these cherubic faces, but that’s not what happens.

Instead a clear “Meow-ow-ow!” rings out, and the two boys exchange meows for the rest of the piece.

When the first boy sings the first meow, there is no reaction from the audience and they seem a little confused. But once boy two chimes in, they seem to get the joke and the laughs abound throughout the performance.

The camera shows the audience throughout the performance, and adults and children alike are delighted by the cat duet. You’ll see two sweet little girls giggle together, and one grown man clapping perhaps the hardest he has in his entire life.

Historians debate who wrote this choral masterpiece, but they do know it was written in 1825. Whoever wrote it, it’s clear evidence that the human race’s love affair with cats didn’t need the internet to thrive.

It’s been several years since this cat duet first delighted the internet, but it’s a video that always deserves a rewatch when it resurfaces.

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