The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met

I was introduced to opera at 6 years age listening repeatedly to the 78 RPM 3 disk recording of this magnificent Disney production. I never saw the video until I was 40 years old. It is a charming and exciting animation that will captivate young children. I forgot about opera by 9 years age until I accidentally heard the sextet from Lucia di Lammermoor at college and immediately recognized Willie. I fell in love with grand opera all over again at that moment and pushed aside my rock and pop collections.

Music from Barber of Seville (Rossini), Lucia di Lammermoor (Donizetti), Pagliacci (Leoncavallo), Mephistofiles (Boito), Tristan und Isolde (Wagener), Martha (Flotow), possibly other I do not recognize.

Play it to your children. Wean them with it, and one day they will remember.

"Willie the Operatic Whale"... my oh my, I have just watched this for the first time in ages. I barely remembered anything from this. This is one of the segments from Walt Disney's "Make Mine Music".

While certainly not as good as the little masterpiece "Peter and the Wolf", this one is enjoyable in a different way. The first minutes are a bit weak, but once the whale Willie is introduced, this improves notoriously.

This whale's name (Willie) could almost cause some confusion with Willy (the orca from the "Free Willy" movies). But only their names are similar. Similar, not equal. And yes, they are both whales, but this Willie is a sperm whale.

Willie himself makes this short so enjoyable. He might be enormous, but he's a nice and friendly whale. In other words, a gentle giant. He doesn't hurt or do anything bad to anyone, he's just a very unusual whale that likes to take advantage of his incredible talent to sing Opera music. He sings very well, especially that delightful Italian song "Figaro" (a song which can also be heard in a great commercial of the Fiat Ritmo). In fact, that's precisely what Willie wishes most: to become an Opera singer... which happens. Willie has more amazing and unbelievable abilities that make him a very special whale. The ending, however, is sad: poor Willie! Whales are certainly majestic and fantastic big animals. They fascinate me. Sadly, they are an endangered species. If this keep going like this, someday there will be no more whales.

As for the cartoon, it has generally good artwork, aside in the first minutes before the whale appears. The sceneries, the seagulls and Willie are especially well drawn.

When I was 8 or so, I used to watch Willie the Operatic Whale a lot and loved it. I am 17 now, and watching it again, brings back all those good memories. The cartoon is very short, but is so sweet and charming you can't help but like it. I absolutely love anything to do with classical music, and would love to train to be a singer in a few years time, and this cartoon was the one where I drew my inspiration from. The animation is really lovely considering it was made in 1946, especially Willie in heaven, and Nelson Eddy, from films such as the Chocolate Soldier, narrates with feeling and passion, and sang the soundtrack wonderfully. The story, is simple, about a whale who sings opera with three voices tenor, baritone and bass, and there are attempts to kill Willie, as people think he swallowed an opera singer, and in the end he does get killed and that was sad. The ending was really sad, seeing that seagull like that, made me want to reach into the television and hug him. I think the real star was the music, wonderful choices, from the hilarious Largo Al Factotum from Barber of Seville, Mephistopheles' terrifying aria from Mephistophele, the sextet from Lucia Di Lamemoor(a beautiful piece too) and a duet from Wagner's masterpiece Tristan and Isolde. Overall, a beautiful cartoon, that has made me appreciate classical music more over the years. 10/10 Bethany Cox.

Originally part of the movie Make Mine Music, this cartoon was released later on its own as a theatrical short. This is a showcase for Nelson Eddy, who does the narration, voices of the characters, and all the singing. The story is about a whale named Willie that is heard singing by the crew of a ship at sea. As reports spread about Willie, opera impresario Tetti-Tatti is convinced the singing is actually coming from an opera singer the whale must have swallowed. He sets out to hunt and kill Willie to prove this. What follows is a bittersweet and somewhat allegorical story with a surprisingly dark end. It's a good cartoon with nice animation and impressive vocals from Eddy. Not sure how the ending will play for little ones, though.

A Walt Disney Cartoon.

Endowed with tremendous vocal powers, WILLIE THE OPERATIC WHALE dreams of leaving his ocean home and becoming a success on the stage of the New York Met.

This heart touching little film, originally the closing segment of MAKE MINE MUSIC (1946), is buoyed along by the colorful animation and a prodigious vocal performance by Nelson Eddy who enacts all the roles - young & old, male & female, human & animal. The ending couldn't be better.

Walt Disney (1901-1966) was always intrigued by pictures & drawings. As a lad in Marceline, Missouri, he sketched farm animals on scraps of paper; later, as an ambulance driver in France during the First World War, he drew comic figures on the sides of his vehicle. Back in Kansas City, along with artist Ub Iwerks, Walt developed a primitive animation studio that provided animated commercials and tiny cartoons for the local movie theaters. Always the innovator, his ALICE IN CARTOONLAND series broke ground in placing a live figure in a cartoon universe. Business reversals sent Disney & Iwerks to Hollywood in 1923, where Walt's older brother Roy became his lifelong business manager & counselor. When a mildly successful series with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit was snatched away by the distributor, the character of Mickey Mouse sprung into Walt's imagination, ensuring Disney's immortality. The happy arrival of sound technology made Mickey's screen debut, STEAMBOAT WILLIE (1928), a tremendous audience success with its use of synchronized music. The SILLY SYMPHONIES soon appeared, and Walt's growing crew of marvelously talented animators were quickly conquering new territory with full color, illusions of depth and radical advancements in personality development, an arena in which Walt's genius was unbeatable. Mickey's feisty, naughty behavior had captured millions of fans, but he was soon to be joined by other animated companions: temperamental Donald Duck, intellectually-challenged Goofy and energetic Pluto. All this was in preparation for Walt's grandest dream - feature length animated films. Against a blizzard of doomsayers, Walt persevered and over the next decades delighted children of all ages with the adventures of Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi & Peter Pan. Walt never forgot that his fortunes were all started by a mouse, or that childlike simplicity of message and lots of hard work always pay off.