Rhapsody Rabbit is a 1946 American animated comedy short film in the Merrie Melodies series, directed by Friz Freleng and featuring Bugs Bunny. The short was originally released to theaters by Warner Bros. Pictures on November 9, 1946. This short is a follow-up of sorts to Freleng's 1941 Academy Award-nominated short Rhapsody in Rivets, which featured the "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" by Franz Liszt. The "instrument" used to perform the "Hungarian Rhapsody" in Rhapsody in Rivets is a skyscraper under construction, while this short features Bugs playing the piece at a piano, while being pestered by a mouse. In 1946, film critic James Agee wrote in The Nation that the short is "the funniest thing I have seen since the decline of sociological dancing," saying, "The best of it goes two ways: one, very observant parody of concert-pianistic affectations, elegantly thought out and synchronized; the other, brutality keyed into the spirit of the music to reach greater subtlety than I have ever seen brutality reach before." Rhapsody Rabbit was the first cartoon to be broadcast on Cartoon Network when the channel launched on October 1, 1992. Plot Following a bar of "Merrily We Roll Along" and a segment of the "lively" portion of Wagner's Siegfried funeral march, Bugs Bunny walks onstage to applause and prepares to play the grand piano. Throughout the cartoon, he runs through a large assortment of visual gags while continuing to play the Hungarian Rhapsody. The first involves an (off-screen) audience member who coughs and hacks loudly just as Bugs is poised to play. After a second time, Bugs whips out a revolver from his tailcoat and shoots the audience member to shut them up. He then resumes the concert. Although the short is primarily pantomime, Bugs speaks a few times. At one point, he is interrupted by a phone ring, timed to echo a short fluttering strain that Bugs is playing at that moment. The phone is inside the piano: "Eh, what's up, doc? Who? Franz Liszt? Never [heard] of him. Wrong number." When playing a repeated, descending three-note sequence (which happens to be the same three-note sequence (Mi-Re-Do) notably used in the unrelated Rossini aria "Largo al factotum" from The Barber of Seville, which would be spoofed in a later Bugs cartoon), Bugs accompanies his piano playing by singing, "Fi-ga-ro! Fi-ga-ro!" A mouse appears and pesters Bugs the rest of the way, although the