The Carnival of The Animals - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

• In 1999, Walt Disney Animation Studios incorporated the "Finale" into Fantasia 2000. In the film, a flock of flamingos are annoyed by another flamingo playing with a yo-yo and attempt to make him fall into step with their dance routines. The music was recorded by James Levine conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with the preceding narration done by James Earl Jones.
• A surf-rock version of "Aquarium" covered by Dick Dale was used as the theme song of the Space Mountain roller coaster at Disneyland in California from 1996 to 2003. This same version was featured in the game Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour.
• "The Swan" is used in the 2005 film My Summer of Love by P. Pawlikowski. Tamsin performs it on her cello when Mona visits her house for the first time.
• "Aquarium" is featured in the trailers for the 1994 film Only You, the 1974 film The Godfather Part II, the 1995 film Babe, the 2006 film Charlotte's Web and the 2008 film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and appears to be one of the influences on the main theme in Walt Disney's Beauty and the Beast and is especially prominent in the cue titled "The West Wing". It is also the opening theme music to the 1978 film Days of Heaven and the opening and closing theme in the 1992 film documentary, Visions of Light. "Aquarium" is played throughout the Simpsons episode "The Wife Aquatic", and can be heard in the episode of The Ren and Stimpy Show entitled "The Cat That Laid the Golden Hairball". The Aquarium also runs repeatedly throughout an episode of How I Met Your Mother in season 5 or 6. It is also heard in the video game Crash Tag Team Racing, and along with "Swan" is part of the soundtrack of the video game Burnout Paradise (2008 edition). It is also used in the film Impressions de France, shown at the French theater in Epcot's Showcase of Nations (see Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida).
• Australian/British classical crossover string quartet Bond remade a version of the Aquarium movement on their album Born, although Camille Saint-Saëns is uncredited .
• The theme from the "Royal March of the Lion" was used as the musical motif for the Dreyfus Fund commercials which aired on American television. This pairing of the music and the Dreyfus Lion was used for many years starting in the early 1950s.
• Roland Petit's ballet Proust ou les intermittences du cœur uses the Ouverture to open both acts.
• In 1976, Warner Brothers produced a television special directed by Chuck Jones featuring an abridged version of The Carnival of the Animals with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck playing the piano duo. (It opens with Bugs and Daffy arguing over the pronunciation of the composer's name, Bugs calmly pronouncing it "Kameel Sann-Sawns," which approaches the correct French, and Daffy repeatedly insisting angrily that it is pronounced "Caymile Saynt Sayens," which is incorrect and improperly Anglicized.) The live-action orchestra is conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas. "The Turtle", "The Mule", "The Cuckoo" and "The Swan" are omitted, a brief version of "The Pianists" is heard in the end credits, and the verse for "The Mule" is tacked onto the verse for "The Jackass."
• Gary Burghoff was the Narrator for a video recording (released in 1989 on VHS by Twin Towers Enterprises) of Carnival of the Animals performed by the Mormon Youth Symphony and combining live action with animation, setting the performance in the San Diego Zoo before an audience of children and their parents. One of the more amusing segments places the two pianists in an enclosure with a sign reading "Please Don't Feed the Pianists".
• Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons served as narrators in a 1990 video recording from Video Artists International featuring Paul Lustic Dunkel conducting a chamber orchestra consisting of one violin, one flute, one viola, one cello, a double-bass, a clarinet, two pianos, a xylophone and a glass harmonica.
• In 1992, Dove Audio released an all-star cast recording (Dove 30560 {cassette}/30700 {CD}) performed by the Hollywood Chamber Orchestra conducted by Lalo Schifrin: The recording included celebrities Arte Johnson, Charlton Heston, James Earl Jones, Betty White, William Shatner, Ted Danson, Lily Tomlin, Audrey Hepburn, Jaclyn Smith, Joan Rivers, Dudley Moore, Lynn Redgrave, Walter Matthau and Deborah Raffin reciting Nash's poetry.
• The "Aquarium" movement was utilized by Kylie Minogue as part of the opening sequence of her Aphrodite World Tour.