Anvil Chorus - in Popular Culture

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.