In Popular Culture
- Only a quarter-century after the premiere of Il trovatore, W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan musically spoofed the Anvil Chorus in their 1879 operetta The Pirates of Penzance.
- In American sporting events of the early twentieth century, the Anvil Chorus was commonly sung by the spectators or played by a band when a player, especially an opponent, committed an error, or to "rub it in" to the losing side.
- In the 1929 Marx Brothers film The Cocoanuts, Harpo and Chico play the Anvil Chorus on a hotel's cash register. In their next film, Animal Crackers, in 1930, Chico plays a segment on the piano while Harpo clangs two horseshoes together. Later, in 1935's A Night at the Opera, the chorus is sung as part of a performance of Il trovatore as the police and the opera's general manager chase after Harpo and Chico backstage and onstage.
- Glenn Miller and his orchestra recorded a big band jazz version of this chorus.
- The chorus is often parodied in the Tiny Toons cartoons.
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Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first—rock and roll or Christianity.”
—John Lennon (1940–1980)
“Both cultures encourage innovation and experimentation, but are likely to reject the innovator if his innovation is not accepted by audiences. High culture experiments that are rejected by audiences in the creator’s lifetime may, however, become classics in another era, whereas popular culture experiments are forgotten if not immediately successful. Even so, in both cultures innovation is rare, although in high culture it is celebrated and in popular culture it is taken for granted.”
—Herbert J. Gans (b. 1927)