you expect in an opera? A happy ending?" before going back to playing dead. Voice cast Mel Blanc as Bugs Bunny (as Brünnhilde), Elmer Fudd (yelling "SMOG!") Arthur Q. Bryan as Elmer Fudd (as Siegfried) (uncredited) Production Originally released to theaters by Warner Bros. on July 6, 1957, What's Opera, Doc? features the speaking and singing voices of Mel Blanc and Arthur Q. Bryan as Bugs and Elmer, respectively. This is the third of the three Warner Bros. shorts (the others being Hare Brush and Rabbit Rampage) in which Elmer defeats Bugs (though here the former shows regret for defeating the latter), as well as the last Elmer Fudd cartoon directed by Jones. What's Opera, Doc? required about six times as much work and expense as any of the other six-minute cartoons his production unit was turning out at the time. Jones admitted as much, having described a surreptitious re-allocation of production time to complete the short. During the six minutes of What's Opera, Doc?, Jones lampoons Disney's Fantasia, the contemporary style of ballet, Wagner's perceived ponderous operatic style, and even the by-then clichéd Bugs-and-Elmer formula. Michael Maltese devised the story for the cartoon, and also wrote lyrics to Wagner's music to create the duet "Return My Love". Art director Maurice Noble devised the stylized backdrops. The cartoon drew upon previous Warner studio work: Maltese originated the concept of Bugs in Valkyrie drag riding a fat horse to the Tannhäuser Pilgrim's Chorus in the suppressed 1945 wartime cartoon Herr Meets Hare, directed by Friz Freleng. The legacy of "Kill the Wabbit" What's Opera, Doc? is sometimes alluded to informally in conversations and in online and printed references as "Kill the Wabbit". This unofficial, alternative title is derived from the line sung by Elmer to the tune of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries", part of the opening passage from Act Three of Die Walküre, which is also the leitmotif of the Valkyries. For his 2016 article about the cartoon, one titled "How Bugs Bunny and 'Kill the Wabbit' Inspired a Generation of Opera Stars", Michael Phillips of The Wall Street Journal examined how "a cartoon rabbit and his speech-impaired nemesis" provided many children in 1957 and in the decades thereafter their first, albeit absurd exposure to Wagner's compositions and to the world of opera. Phillips in his article furnishes comments by various operatic performers and stage crews regarding how watching What's